


The Relic of Niveus Astrum

by kesomon



Series: Infinity Key Saga [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005) ×Doctor Who (1963) ×Doctor Who & Related Fandoms ×
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Grief/Mourning, One-Sided Attraction, Regeneration, Time War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:38:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 45,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8243132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kesomon/pseuds/kesomon
Summary: A message left behind, an old friend’s last words. A powerful secret is hidden on Niveus Astrum, one that could bring new hope to the Eye of Orion. But the Doctor knows a bigger secret; one that, if ignored, could mean the death of his companions. With all of history already written, how can he stop what is inevitable to come?





	1. History Unravelling

**Author's Note:**

> Venustas was born from my love of the Latin language and the mystery of the Eye of Orion (never quite explained in the series.) This story provides a suggestion to what happened to the people that used to live on the Eye of Orion, and to the odd advancement of the civilizations of Rome and Atlantis.  
> I do use several phrases and words in Latin (probably horrible Latin) throughout the story, so at the end of each chapter, I will provide translations.
> 
> I want to give a humongous bear hug and super-props to my fantastic beta, Emery Board, for without the help she gave, half this story would be rubbish, and the other half would be horribly butchered. She fixed so many of my errors in brilliant ways; I should really be crediting her as a co-writer. Seriously.
> 
> I have plans to re-write this fic to better fit an overall plot device for the Infinity Key series, but as I have no idea when that will happen, I am posting this in its original format. Please enjoy!

_*-Beep, beep, beep, beep…-*_

_*-Crackle, fizz…-*_  
_“Log date…hell, I don’t know. I’ve been out of it too long. Something’s gone wrong, terribly wrong…I only hope this message reaches you – if only to put what really happened in the record books…because it can’t be stopped._ _It’s too late for us now. The plan, the entire system failed – the power levels were too massive. Far too massive, it doesn’t make sense. Time is…_ splintering _; I can_ feel it _, inside my head. You have to fix this._

_Doctor, **please** , if you get this. Put things right.” _

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The low rumble began underground, from within the planet’s dense core. A chain reaction held back by millions and millions of years of pristine stability now had been unleashed with the interruption of the balance. The earth began to shake, and deep chasms ripped themselves in the surface of the planet. Forests burned and animals fled with nowhere to go. The destruction was inevitable, and inescapable.

From the core, the reaction turned critical, and the world became white as the planet itself folded in, becoming a white-hot nucleus of plasma and pure energy. Then it exploded outward with the force of a supernova, decimating the two small moons that orbited the planet and sweeping across the Orion solar system, unforgiving of all in its path.

Within the capital city of Advica, the people of Venustas fled to the shelter of their homes as the sky burned, but like the animals, their instinct to preserve their lives were in vain. Cities crumbled and oceans boiled. Like the people of Pompeii against Vesuvius, there was no escape from the wrath of the universe’s nature.  
When the sun dawned in blazing glory over the horizon to shine on Venustas the next morning, it cast its rays on a barren and lifeless world, and the crumbling ruins of a once proud people. The only survivors lay with those who boarded the last deep space shuttles and set off for new colonizing grounds.

But all hope was not quite lost…

In the depths of the planet’s surface, the tiniest forms of life had survived. Microscopic flora and fauna woke from their ancient slumber. The dance of predator and prey began again, and a super-accelerated ripple of time, left behind by the planet’s implosion, gave them time to grow. The single-celled organisms became multi-celled, and the first flatworms and primitive plant life burrowed their way from beneath the charred surface of the planet.  
Life took its foothold in the soil, and the air was slowly recycled, as the plants breathed in the toxins of the air, cleansing it of carbon dioxide and sulfur and seeding new oxygen in the clouds. The sky became charged, the high bombardment of ions in the atmosphere producing massive storms.

Venustas saw its first forms of life a second time over. Arachnids and mammalian reptiles fought for supremacy over the new world, avian life flourished in the trees, and Venustas forgot that it had once been utopia – and so did the rest of the universe. The planet lay forgotten in the void of space.

Hundreds of centuries later, a thunderous rasping groan broke the silence of the planet, and the first alien life, with an explorer’s eye and brown hair beginning to gray, looked out upon this strange, alien paradise from the doorway of his craft, and remembered.

And the Eye of Orion was found.


	2. The Segment

Somewhere, between the very fabric of worlds, galaxies and the universe itself, sandwiched between them like an invisible barrier – is the Time Vortex.

Old Gallifreyan jokes suggested it as being history’s way of stopping everything from happening at once, and maybe that is the best way to describe it. It flows through all of everywhere like an untameable river, weaving in and out with waves of indigo, blue and red.

And deep within this ethereal force, a lone blue Police Public Call box with a winking white light perched on top was swept along in the confused tide, like a squat blue salmon trying to swim up a waterfall of time.

Of course, the strange blue box was not actually what it appeared to be. It was a type 40 model TT-capsule from Gallifrey; a TARDIS, which stood for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space – the last of its kind in existence.

Inside, oblivious to the chaotic stirrings of the Vortex energies around their tiny craft, two humans stood by watching as the pilot of their vessel scurried around the control room like a ferret on Red Bull.

“Attach wire ‘A’ to section ‘E’, making sure not to cross ‘K’ and ‘H’ – no, no wouldn’t want to muck with that – where did I put those trinomial scanner leads…?”

The pilot himself wasn’t human in the strictest sense of the word –having two hearts and a respiratory by-pass system tended to exclude him from that category. He was the last of the Time Lords, and liked to be known as the Doctor; a lanky, lithe character with short brown hair, a slight cockney accent and soulful brown eyes which were usually used for getting the last biscuit in the tin.

But there were hidden depths as well –hidden sorrows and a world of regrets nestled just out of sight, behind the child-like brashness. They seemed to hold the universe in their depths, as though you might become lost in them if you looked too hard.  
  
That is, until the Doctor blinked, grinned his toothy, manic smile, and asked you why you were staring at him so intently.

Currently, the Doctor had a mess of wires looped around his neck, rigging some contraption up that looked like a deformed octopus. Making a wry face, he touched one of the bare ends to his tongue.

There was an unexpected spark as metal met flesh, and he jerked it away, glaring balefully at it as he licked his lips. He muttered something about power flow and attached the wire to a small suction cup, which was in turn stuck to one of the facets of a crystal that rested on a portion of the mushroom-shaped control console.

The crystal was, as most things in the Doctor’s life tended to turn out, far more than it seemed.

For the people of the Nebatian system, it was known as the Katseye, the most spectacularly perfect diamond in the history of creation, worth at least the better quarter of the spiral arm of the Milky Way.

For the Doctor, who had been given the diamond by Mel, a reunited old companion, it was something infinitely more rare, which, as his last estimate, would have increased its value enough to let him put in a fair bid for the entire Milky Way.

Sabalom Glitz, an old…well, if not friend, certainly not quite an enemy, had acquired (“read “stolen”) the diamond from a pair of muscle-bound thugs, whereupon Mel, now his pilot, had appealed to his better nature (read “threatened to do a number of nasty things to a certain space-faring pirate”) and prevailed on him to give the diamond to the Doctor for safe-keeping.

The fact that both the muscle-bound thugs were now dead was, surprisingly, nothing to do with the Doctor. And if he had a nagging worry about the two dead mercenaries, he was keeping it to himself.

Death always walked in the shadow of the gem. That was the trouble with segments of the Key to Time.

Martha Jones exchanged a bemused look with Captain Jack. The dark-skinned girl had joined the Doctor after he helped thwart a faction of Ice Warriors, who had inadvertently been woken up by a class of archaeology students, from destroying her university and waging war on all mankind for invading their planet. Though human, she was not from Earth itself. She had been born, raised, and schooled in Maris Omega, an outlying settlement on the fourth rock from the Sol-system star.

Despite her heritage as a member of an advanced civilization, and possessing some of the best medical training available for her time, she understood very little of the Doctor’s techno-babble.

Sometimes, she suspected he made it up.

“Doctor,” she called, leaning against one of the coral-like support struts of the control room. “What are you doing?”

She got no answer but an unintelligible grunt from the Time Lord’s concentrated expression. Jack gave her a pitying grin.

Captain Jack Harkness was a man out of time – literally. Once a captain in the ranks of the Time Agency in the 51st century, he had skipped out when he woke up to discover two years of his memory had vanished overnight. He had met the Doctor during the Time Lord’s previous incarnation, but had been left behind, believed dead. He’d found himself in Cardiff, and soon became head of Torchwood-3, some short time prior to the Cybermen-Dalek invasion of 2007. Eventually he’d run into the Doctor again, and returned to the Time Lord’s company for some TLC and some answers.

“Now see, I think _that_ grunt meant, _‘I’m trying to make what I’m doing sound clever, but really I’m just trying to use this hunk of rock that may or may not be a piece of the key to all time and space as an extra battery.’_ ” Jack supplied helpfully for the Martian, who smiled sardonically back at him.

Both of them looked back at the Doctor, who had finished attaching suction cups to the crystal and was poking buttons while studying the computer.

“Doctor, I still don’t quite understand this whole Key to Time business. What exactly IS this thing?” The Doctor glanced up, looking for the world like he had only just realized his companions were staring at him.

Which was probably the simple truth.

“Martha, Martha, my dear Doctor Jones,” he chided, shaking his head and beckoning her over. She obeyed and walked across the grating, leaning against the pilot’s chair as he took off his black-rimmed glasses and tucked them in the breast pocket of his brown pinstripe suit.

“The Key to Time is a piece of technology. Very advanced technology; it was built by a race known, to us, as the Guardians. When it is assembled, it takes the shape of a perfect cube, and has the power to manipulate, or even stop time altogether. Usually it is broken into six different segments.”

He pushed back his coat and stuck his hands into his pockets, standing up just a little taller.

Jack and Martha exchanged looks. They knew that posture –the Doctor was going to “lecture mode.”

Oblivious to his companions’ irreverence, the Doctor continued.  
“These segments,” he explained, pulling his glasses from a pocket and waving them in the air for emphasis, “are scattered all across time and space, and are disguised as anything you could think of. A piece of a statue, a whole planet, a flawless diamond,” he gestured to the crystal on the console, “or even a human being. Once upon a time, I was given a locator rod that would track down the pieces and convert them from disguised form to original form when touched. They then fit together, sort-of like a puzzle.”

He left out the bit where he described how he himself had never actually managed to fit any of the pieces together himself – to his secret embarrassment and Romana’s public delight…

“Now, when I first encountered this device, one of the guardians, the White Guardian, had employed me to find the pieces of this key. The universe had become so out of balance that he needed me to assemble the key so that he could reset the natural order. But a rival, calling himself the Black Guardian, also wanted the Key, so that he could throw everything into chaos and pretty much end our existence.”

“With the help of my then-companion Romana, I managed to complete the key for the White Guardian and the universe was saved. The Black Guardian was rather flustered, if I recall…”

The Doctor grinned impishly. “I might’ve annoyed him slightly; he did swear eternal vengeance or something to the same effect. But luckily his attempt to brainwash Turlough to kill me failed, multiple times in fact, and he disappeared in a ball of flames.”

There was a second’s pause as Martha and Jack took this in, and the Doctor frowned. ”I think he did, anyway,” he amended.

Martha considered pressing for details, but knew from past experiences that that way lay madness.

“So how did you know that this diamond was a bit of the Key?” she asked, tapping a fingernail on the transparent surface of one of the un-suctioned facets. “I mean, it’s disguised, and no one ever knew it was a piece, even though it’s been out circulating that system for generations,” The Doctor knocked her hand lightly away, and grinned in his best _poncy-mysterious-Lord-of-Time_ way.

“No, don’t tell us.” Jack put his two hands to his temples and adopted a patently fake foreign accent. “Because you’re a Time Lord, and have special voodoo-freaky powers of perception that mere mortals cannot understand,” he guessed with a grin.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “Voodoo-freaky powers indeed…” he said indignantly, before honesty prodded him. “We-ell, you’re half right, Jack. I am a Time Lord, remember. That, among other things, means I’m a time-sensitive. I have also encountered the segments before; outside the TARDIS, inside the TARDIS, and in their natural and converted forms.”

“And that means what in layman’s terms?”

The Doctor adopted a smug smile. “I recognized the _‘voodoo-freaky’_ aura of the diamond as soon as I opened my mental senses to its molecular structure.”

“At least you didn’t lick it,” Martha muttered, earning an injured look from the Time Lord in question. She rolled her eyes. “Come on Doctor, that habit is disgusting, not to mention unsanitary and subject to exposure to who-knows-how many kinds of pesky diseases.”

“After nearly 10 centuries, I think I’m immune to most space bugs by now.”

“No one’s immune from everything, Doctor.” She matched his gaze with a glare. It was a lost cause, she knew, but she still tried; like trying to give a 5-year-old his shots.

“Alright, so now that we know what it is,” Jack stepped in, to break the silence. “How about letting us in on what you were doing with it?”

“Ah, yes, well…” The Doctor looked at the crystal, tugging on his earlobe in a gesture they had learned was a sign of embarrassment or nervousness. “I was…uh…trying to use it as an extra battery.”

Ignoring Jack’s roar of laughter, the Doctor began fussing with the computer screen and tapping a few of the circular symbols.

“Now, the segment is still a segment even when in disguise, so I should be able to tap into the natural power supply being generated…”

Martha tried to follow along, but even though the TARDIS translated most alien languages inside her head, the circular language that dominated the Doctor’s computer banks never showed up as Standard.

The Doctor’s face suddenly split into a massive grin and he jumped up, flicking a few switches on the TARDIS console as the diamond began to glow with an unearthly white light.

“I think we’re in business boys and girls! Come on old girl, recognize that taste? That’s good old fashioned Artron energy that is! Ha-ha!” He crowed delightedly, as the lights in the control room dimmed for just a second, and then began to glow with new clarity. The room was lit with more of a golden colour, less green than usual, and the natural thrum of the ship’s walls seemed to brighten.

Martha was grinning despite herself, and she had no idea why. The Doctor’s excitement was catching. Jack was too, though she suspected he knew more of the why and how then she did.

Lights that hadn’t lit since before the Time War were flickering to life among the organic structure of the console, some burning steadily, some flickering weakly, but it was enough to make the Doctor’s smile even brighter.

Suddenly, a new, particularly bright bulb began flashing with an incessant pinging noise, beating out a short staccato of notes, repeating over and over. The Doctor halted in his flurry of excitement to consider it, puzzled.

“Now that’s odd,” he remarked, slightly out of breath.

“Why? What is it?” Martha asked.

Jack had moved to the computer screen and was studying the readouts. Martha felt a small twinge of jealousy; how come the TARDIS translated for him?

“It’s a distress call, Doctor. Odd encryption though, not any sort of signal I’ve seen.”

“Well where’s it coming from?” The Doctor asked, moving around to look at the screen himself.

“Galactic coordinates P2X-780, our timeframe. Otherwise known as…” Jack tapped the screen and it shifted to reveal a planetary model. “The Eye of Orion.”

Neither of them was quite sure why the Doctor’s grin faded so suddenly.


	3. Whispers from the Past

The winds whispered secrets to nobody’s ears as it danced across the plains of untouched wilderness, stirring the birds from their perches among the trees. In the pale blue sky, the faintest trace of a massive gas giant hovered just above the horizon, and the smaller bright circles of twin moons hovered across its image, dancing a ballet of the heavens.

In the crumbling ruins of a long-dead civilization, a low, melodic wheezing sound rose in pitch as the familiar form of the TARDIS slowly materialized into existence. The light on top died with a final thump, and the birds, startled into the air with scolding squawks and chirps, settled back down, curiously examining this alien… _thing_ intruding on their private paradise.

A bolder reptilian creature with a flat, webbed tail flicked its tongue out, tasting the air as it crawled closer to the strange blue box. Then it vanished out of sight as the door clicked, and swung open inwards.

Martha stepped out onto the alien soil, looking pleasantly surprised at the peaceful surroundings. She breathed a deep, cleansing sigh, and smiled, wandering away from the TARDIS in awe as Jack followed her out, checking his wrist-computer for readings.

The Doctor was last out of the craft, not bothering to lock the door, and looked around with a sort of sad, wistful happiness. As if he had come back to a place that held memories both good and bad.

“Welcome to the Eye of Orion, you two,” he announced. “My favourite planet...well, one of them at least.”

“It’s beautiful…” Martha breathed, climbing onto a pile of stones and taking in the breathtaking horizon. “I feel so relaxed. Like the atmosphere itself is laced with nitrous oxide.”

The Doctor smiled in amusement. “Not quite. It’s the high ionization charge in the atmosphere. Like Earth after a thunderstorm, I think Tegan once said; it’s one of the reasons why the Eye of Orion is one of the most peaceful places in the universe.”

“No life signs readings in the area, except for the birds and yours truly,” Jack remarked, walking over and taking the sights for himself. He whistled appreciatively. “Now that is something.”

“Well that’s expected. The Eye has been barren of sapient life since…long before my time.” Then he pulled out a chunky device from his coat pocket, and twisted the dial. It began to beep in the same staccato chirp that the distress signal had been making, and he turned to triangulate the position. “It’s coming from this way. Come on.” The three set off, following the Doctor’s tracking device into the forest.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“So, why is this place abandoned, Doctor? With all the natural resources and ideal conditions, I’d have thought folks would want to colonize it as soon as possible.” Martha climbed over a fallen log, reaching out to grab Jack’s arm to steady her descent.

The Doctor snorted and shook his head. “Humans, always looking for a new place to squat. As it so happens, the Eye is a temporal glitch in itself. There’s an unexplained disturbance in the surrounding space that prevents any and all ships from locating the planets in its system. Luckily the TARDIS is exempt from that category, being crafted with superior temporal engineering and all.”

“Huh?”

“It’s Pirates of the Caribbean in space. This is the Isla de Muerta, and we have the only magic compass that can point in its direction,” Jack simplified with a grin. Martha laughed.

“I never should’ve shown you that movie. But I get it. So whoever or whatever we’re tracking, managed to rig up a compass of their own, and probably shipwrecked on the rocks.”

“In a galactically simplified nutshell, yes,” the Doctor answered tersely, before wandering into the trees, stopping, and turning back around. “Signal seems to be coming from somewhere around here.”

Martha caught a glimpse of something in the nearby foliage, and craned her neck, picking her way towards it. It looked glossy, like metal, and was a faded, tarnished crimson colour.

“Doctor, Jack,” she called over her shoulder. “I think I found something.”

Jack turned his head curiously and wandered over to stand next to her, staring dumbstruck at the discovery.

“Maybe you were right about nitrous oxide in the air, Jones; I could swear I was looking at a double-decker bus from London.”

Martha scrunched up her nose in frustration and wandered around to the front of the vehicle. “Maybe it’s because you ARE looking at a double-decker bus from London. The sign on the front says it’s the number 22 bound for Putney Common. …This is too surreal. Hey Doctor, come and take a look at this!”

The Doctor wandered over, and stopped dead, dropping the tracker to the ground. He didn’t pick it up. He was staring at the bus in the most peculiar…no, strike that. He looked absolutely horrified.

“Oh it couldn’t be…no, no, the chances are impossible that it’s hers…” He muttered under his breath, shaking his head in denial as he walked slowly towards the anachronistic transportation vehicle.

The bus had obviously been there a long time. The forest had grown around it, creeper vines and other fauna trailing up the sides. Several of the windshields were cracked, and the front left headlight was broken. The Doctor approached it slowly, murmuring in the same soft tones he used whenever the TARDIS had been injured. His hands shook minutely as he reached out to touch the cold metal surface.  
Almost instantly he snatched them back, as if he had been burned. He gaped at his hands, then at the bus, as if not daring to believe whatever had happened. “By the Other, it’s still-!” He broke his sentence mid-word and dashed forward, tearing away the blockage of foliage with a determined urgency.

“Iris!” He hollered through the doors, as he cleared them away, and pounded his fist a few times on the glass. “Iris, are you in there?”

“What on earth’s gotten into you, Doc?” Jack demanded. The Doctor ignored him. He’d begun feeling along the edges of the sliding doors for a latch or a keyhole, or a weak point to force it open with.

Curious and worried about the Time Lord’s actions, if not his sanity, Jack pressed his own hand to the side of the bus, and his eyes widened. It had a faint, nearly undetectable hum, _just like the TARDIS_.

Martha gasped from somewhere to his side; she had also touched the vehicle, and drawn the same revelation. “Oh my god…”

“Damn!” The Doctor swore (a rarity in itself), and stepped back. “Come on Doctor, think, what would she use as a safeguard…” He growled under his breath in frustration and raked a hand through his hair. Then, his eyes lit up.  
Whatever delight his new idea had brought to his face had soon drawn it into an irritably resigned look, and he steeled himself. He pounded once, twice, three times on the door, and shouted “It’s the Doctor, Iris; now open the ruddy doors before I break them down!”

With a bleary, harmonic groan, the old doors swung open beneath his touch, and the Doctor grinned, with a reluctant sort of superiority. “Guessed it’d be keyed to my name, infernal woman…” he muttered, and disappeared inside before either of his companions could even open their mouths to ask.

Martha was quicker then Jack was, and darted in after the Doctor, climbing up the stairs into the interior of the old bus.

The Doctor stood in the middle of the room, a vacant look in his eyes, all his previous frantic energy drained out of the normally exuberant man.

“Doctor…?” Martha ventured hesitantly, laying a hand on his arm gently. “Are…are you alright?”

“Guess it was too much to hope I was wrong.” He said quietly, turning to look at his companion with a sad sort of smile. “I knew she wouldn’t be here. She would never have let her bus get in such disarray if she was alive.”

“Who?”

“Iris,” said the Doctor slowly. He shook his head, and gazed around him, at the small, cramped chaise lounges covered with fine gray dust, untouched for centuries; at the drinks cabinet, holding every drink known to man, and quite a few that man had had the good sense to leave well enough alone; at the shattered remains of a few empty bottles, a box of jewellery tossed casually aside, it’s contents strewn haphazardly across the floor, probably knocked into such disarray by the crash…or whatever had happened to the bus when it had arrived.

Martha suddenly knew he was not seeing the dirt and decay, even as he dusted off an over-turned brandy bottle. He was seeing this bus the way it had been in its prime, with a woman – Iris –sitting in the pilot’s seat, laughing, joking; maybe even taking a swig from the bottle.

“Iris Wildthyme,” he said sadly. The bottle was still half full. He eyed it speculatively, and Martha wasn’t sure if he was deciding whether to drink it, or hurl it against the wall.

Then the moment was gone. “She was an old…well, not really a friend…acquaintance? No, that’s not right either.”

He sighed. “She was Iris,” he said finally, as though that explained everything. “I used to think she was stalking me –caused me more grief than an army of Daleks. But her hearts were always in the right place, in the end.”

 “Another Time Lord?” Jack asked quietly, leaning against the framework, his hands in his pockets. He got a nod in reply. “And this was her TARDIS?”

“What’s left of it, yes…I’m just amazed that it’s survived this long.” He reached up and patted the side of the dying ship. “Poor old thing…usually a TARDIS dies with their pilot, casting themselves into the vortex and travel on and on to the end of existence…Somewhere out there there’s a whole graveyard of TARDIS, laid to rest…”

Martha hugged herself quietly, and shivered as her mind formulated the mental image, glancing around the cramped quarters. It seemed…smaller then it should’ve been. It felt wrong.

Behind the Doctor on the dusty and ill-fated panel of controls, a readout screen flickered to life. It caught Martha’s eye, and she stiffened slightly.

“Doctor…” she whispered, nodding her head at it. He frowned, and turned around.

The holographic image of a woman flickered into existence.

She was slender, middle-aged, maybe in her 40’s, and had curly brown hair that was pinned back roughly out of her eyes. A long frock coat trimmed with fur and patterned in leopard spots hanging down to her knees, over a scarlet skirt and rumpled, flowery shirt that looked slept-in, though Martha was sure it had looked splendorous in its prime. The woman looked haggard, and definitely drunk, judging from the bottle of brandy in her ringed hand. But her eyes were chips of clear emerald green, and she stared straight at the Doctor, a half-smile gracing her ruby lips.

The Doctor looked like he’d seen a ghost. In effect, he had.

“Hello. What date is it?” the hologram said, hiccupping with a small laugh as she shook her head, rubbing her eye wearily. “Been jumped so long ‘round space-time I think it’s scrambled me ‘ead more then any hyper-vodka could. An’ that’s sayin’ somethin’ there; I knew the greatest place to-no, _no_. Iris, ye really should stop talkin’ to yerself and wastin’ time. Not that it’s not a gift; I remember that time wit’ the Silurians and the Master, took a quick bit o’ thinkin’ there to talk me way outta that one.” She hiccupped again, this time a sob, and fiercely dug tears out of her eyes. The Doctor suppressed a groan.   
“Still taking credit for my life, same old-” he cut himself off as the hologram ghost of his old friend squared herself and straightening up, trying to show some sense of decency.

“This is…this is emergency program 0. If you’re watchin’ this, Chuck, it means…well, you’ll know, I s’pose,” She fixed the Doctor with a long-suffering, warning look. “An’ I know ye’ll raise a fuss ‘bout this, so relax. The files in the memory banks are encrypted to your bio-signature – only you can access them. Cuz if anyone survives this, I know it’ll be you, Doctor.”

The Doctor sucked in a startled breath, taking a step back. Though he had guessed the message was left for him, to hear her say it was an entirely different matter.

The hologram continued, unhampered by the reaction. ”Ye always were the strongest, bravest man I ever had the pleasure o’ knowin’, y’know. An’ I’m sorry we never got a chance to properly show our feelin’s for each other –” the Doctor made a sudden strangled choking noise, and Jack raised an eyebrow understandingly.

“It’s all right, Doctor,” he said reassuringly. “We all have needs and you –”

He was interrupted by a low growl, and a vehement “NO.”

“Hello?” Martha gestured at the hologram. “ _Someone_ is still talking.”

 Iris was still reminiscing to a distracted audience. “Hope ye’re still the good-lookin’ bloke I left on Gallifrey…dunno if your future regenerations could ever bypass the one I last saw. Fightin’ the Master in San Francisco, savin’ the universe again, we had some good times we did.”  
Iris’s recorded ghost grinned weakly, before the smile faded and she took a swig from the bottle in her hand, coughing slightly at the burn of the alcohol.

“Roit Doc; here’s the important bit, I s’pose. This recording contains the log entries of the Orion mission - I’ve done this because I really don’t think I’ll make it out of this one. Press the sequence Rassilon-Omega-0-1-52-4 into the computer banks. Listen close Doctor, and listen good, cos I don’t know how much power will still be left by the time you find this. This might only play once. After that, my ol’ bus’ll finally have her peace…we both know what loosing their driver does to a TARDIS.”  
The hologram wiped tears off of her cheeks. “Best to you, Doc,” she whispered, leaned forward and pressed an invisible button, and vanished, and the computer bank bleeped weakly.

The Doctor stood, frozen on the spot for a few moments, breathing somewhat ragged as if he were fighting tears. Then he moved forward silently, pressing a few buttons on the console.

“Jack, go back to the TARDIS, in the lab…” he ordered hoarsely, his voice gaining strength as he talked. “Find the portable energy generator, we’ve gotta keep the power running as long as we can. It should be under the workbench in lab C.”

Jack nodded solemnly and left the ship. Martha hung back, vaguely aware of the warm wetness streaking her cheeks. She wiped away the tears and moved forward hesitantly.

“Anything I can do, Doctor?” She asked softly. He slowed his movements, his back still turned to her. Then he glanced over his shoulder with a weak smile.  
“Of course…” He heaved a sigh, and took in the room with a small spark of his old curiosity. “Look around a bit; see if you can find where she’s hidden the data crystals. We’ll record as much as we can.”

Martha nodded and began rummaging around in the collection of dusty old artefacts.

Minutes later, and after Jack had returned with the generator, she triumphantly handed over three palm-sized, ruby-coloured stones she had found in a small box beneath the driver’s seat. The Doctor took them reverently and plugged one into the console, which seemed to be faring a bit better now that it had a new source of energy plugged into its systems. With the first of the data crystals plugged into the recording bank, the Doctor entered the code, stepped back, and pushed a firm finger down on the blue button.

Iris Wildthyme flickered to life once more.


	4. The Orion Mission

The image before them looked just the same as the pre-recorded message. Iris looked worn out, though definitely not drunk. Martha took up a seat on the dusty couch, and Jack perched on the arm, as the Doctor settled into the captain’s chair and entered the Play command. The recording chirped to life with a sort of fake enthusiasm.

_“Log entry, Orion mission, day 1; Hello, I’m Iris Wildthyme, time traveller extraordinaire… though I don’t feel so extraordinary right now. This damn War…it drains all the soul outta ye. Bit of a back-story is needed, I suppose, for this record keeping. Especially if I ain’t gonna be around to tell it._

_I suppose we’re probably at what the historian will call the height of the War –that’s assuming there are any historians left to call it anything._

_But anyway, it’s pretty much a stalemate at the moment. Take a planet there, get it taken back, win an ally, lose one –well, we haven’t lost any, actually, so that’s something to be grateful for at any rate. I’ve never seen so many races working together –Lexions, Sontarans, Draconians, even a couple of Cybermen, for the love of all that’s holy! And just between you and me, I think I saw a Medusoid coming outta Lady President Romana’s chambers the other day…_

_And that’s the problem, really. The Daleks have realised that they might have a hundred thousand battlefleet ships, but they still can’t get past the transduction barrier. Remind me to give Rassilon a big smack on the lips for that little gizmo if I ever see him again. After that time in the Death Zone…_

_But the Daleks have gotten smart. So a little while ago, they started killing off our allies. Anyone who has even so much as a record of a TARDIS landing is likely to find themselves blasted out of space, and Romana was getting desperate._

_Everyone was recalled, yours truly included. And if that doesn’t tell you how badly things were going, nothing will. Most of the time, they like to pretend I don’t even exist, although they like using me for some of their dirty work, the hypocrites._  
_And the dashing Doctor was there as well – his current regeneration was a fox. He didn’t see me there –I bet he didn’t even know they’d called me, but I saw him. Not for long, though –as soon as that dilapidated old Type-40 of his landed, they whisked him off to the Presidential Suites._  
_I know what happened though. They gave him the Arcadia project – lord, Doctor, the look on your face scared me half to regeneration. A face like yours wasn’t one…it shouldn’t have had te’ look so grim. T’was as though they’d just given you the whole of Gallifrey to support.”_

Only another Time Lord would have caught the almost sudden moment of complete unguarded emotion that flashed across the Doctor’s face –grief, guilt, anger, affection and annoyance.  
But his last contact with the Time Lords had been –literally –a lifetime ago, and neither of his Terran companions detected it.

Meanwhile, Iris continued.  
_“Which they had, I guess. Everyone knew how important Arcadia was –and nobody I saw was surprised Romana gave it to him. They still called him “the renegade” –bunch of pompous dusty old fogies –but I think they knew he was their best shot._  
_They gave ol’ Drax an outpost on Kestle, heading up the oversight and construction for the new designs of war-TARDISes. Best place for that boy. Could ‘ave worked out the molecular density of a paper bag … just don’t ask him to punch his way out of it._  
_And they gave me the Orion mission.”_

_“President Romana knew that the currently existing races of our universe were either not advanced enough to fight on our level, or far too advanced to care about petty squabbles of lower beings. But looking through the data records, she found one planet, Venustas, whose people had been on the same verge of evolution and technology as us – minus time travel, of course. They had been wiped out by a natural cataclysm some time near the end of their 30th century.  Romana was desperate…She hadn’t a choice._

_She sent me to change their history.”_

“WHAT?!” The Doctor couldn’t help his outburst and leaped to his feet in outrage. Martha hurriedly hit the Pause command and shot him a glare.

“Doctor, please!”

“You don’t understand!” he yelled, and suddenly, he was more Time Lord than Doctor. His face was furious, and completely without any inclination to try and understand.  
“The ramifications of changing time in such large pockets –the space time continuum could have warped and twisted into any sort of weird and not-so-wonderful patterns. How could she _do_ something like that?! Even _think_ about it?!”

Martha leaned back, alarmed at the sudden change in a man she thought she knew, but Jack just watched him quietly.  
  
“Almost as bad as burning up an entire sun to say goodbye?” he asked.

The Doctor’s eyes wheeled in his head, and he stiffened as though he had been shot.

“That’s not the same, _Captain,_ ” he said, and now his voice was as cold as the breath of winter.

“Fundamentally,” Jack pushed his point. “Yeah, it is. Who’s to say that sun wasn’t going to sustain life in a couple of million years?”

“Doctor,” said Martha, trying to make sure her voice didn’t sound in the least like a psychologist, “don’t you think maybe you’re more upset that she broke the rules and did it anyway, while you played it safe?”

The Doctor looked like he was about to make an angry retort, but then he relaxed, admitting defeat.

“Doctor Jones,” he said with a weary smile, “you are far too good at reading me.”

Mentally, Martha shook her head. The day she understood the Doctor, Sol would roll out of orbit and into a black hole.

“But it’s unheard of,” he persisted, but more calmly this time. “Romana would never have-” he halted, and Martha could almost see his conscience jabbing him in the side.   
“Yes, yes she would’ve,” he conceded. “And I probably would have done the exact same thing in her place.”

Soberly, he sat back down, and pressed the Play command.

_“Alright, back-story over, begin official log recording. Orion mission, day 1 – Currently suspended in geosynchronous orbit above the Kaldar mountain range, circling the planet Niveus Astrum. Observation note: Niveus Astrum is a Venustan-given name. The language is very similar to Earth-Latin, which may imply Venustans made it to Earth at some point in their history. “White Star” is the closest translation. I wonder if their ancestors had any idea what Niveus Astrum would mean to their future.”_

The recording flickered as the transmission switched to the next entry.

_“Orion mission, day 15 – after two weeks of taking readings and making observations, I believe I have arrived at a possible solution to the inevitable cataclysm. I’ve arrived on Venustas outside the capitol city of Advica, in their calendar year of 3096. It seems t’be fall, now; the leaves in the trees are a beautiful rainbow of colours._

_The Venustans are every bit as advanced as we had hoped. Their space program has been reduced to a minimal but effective status, allowing for transport between the inner planets, Astrum, Venustas, and Lylum Tor. They have mastered non-pollutant energy sources and the capitol city, as far as I’ve seen, is a pristine utopia. Despite this advancement, they have few off-world visitors, so my arrival here has been met with some unease. Otherwise, I’ve been treated very well. There is a nice bloke on security forces who I’ve developed quite the camaraderie with. Commander Ionnes Ricus…”_

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_Advica Capitol Square, Day 15, Late Morning, Advica Standard Time._

Commander Ioannes Ricus, Ioan to his friends and Commander to anyone else, rapped his knuckles once, twice, three times on the glossy red frame of the vehicle’s doors, before stepping back, assuming a military posture. He didn’t have long to wait. The occupant of the unusual craft appeared a moment later.

“Oh, good mornin’ lovey.” Iris beamed brightly at the leader of the small contingent of officers that had surrounded her bus. She leaned against the doorframe of the old rattler and stuck her hands in her pockets. “Nice to see such a grand welcoming committee for an ol’ Time Lady like meself.”

“Lady Wildthyme,” began the Commander, but Iris cut him off.

“Please, call me Iris, Commander Ricus. I’m all for formalities towards meself, but we can skip that bit I think, consid’ren the gravities of the situation.”

Commander Ricus looked slightly ruffled, but nodded shortly, and waved a hand. “If you’ll come with us then, ma’am, the presidential council has agreed to hear your proposal.”

“Roit they are too,” Iris hopped to the ground and shut the doors of her bus tight behind her, giving it a fond pat before scurrying after the officer, linking her arm around his rather forwardly and giving him a brash smile. “So, while we’re on the way, how’s about tellin’ me a bit ‘bout yerself?”

Commander Ricus smiled wryly back.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_“Of course, having that old devil on my side is a plus- he reminds me of the Doctor’s third incarnation a bit, all charm and smiles –and something of his Brigadier as well.  A no-nonsense, military mind, and very keen on the judicious use of a few well-placed explosives, if you know what I mean._  
_But anyways - the presidential council was in mixed opinion that my intentions to their planet were in good faith, despite my attempts at presenting the evidence to them in clear full view.”_

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_Council Chambers Meeting Hall, Day 15, Mid-Afternoon A.S.T._

“Bother, I never was good at presentations and the like,” Iris muttered to herself, shuffling through the scattered papers on the conference table. “Diplomacy is the work of the devil, or at least the migraines that come with it are. Ah -” She snatched a slightly dog-eared piece of parchment from the floor and handed it to the aging man seated at her right.

"As you can see here, Presidential-council-leader Jeradius- Can I just call you Jerry? As you can see here Jerry, the wave fluctuations are off the scale.”

“What exactly am I looking at,” the man grunted, squinting at the page with the obvious lack of comprehension as to what the daft, eccentrically dressed woman was babbling about. “I may not be a scientist, but this doesn’t look to me like wave fluctuations.”

Iris snatched the paper back and regarded it with a scowl before handing him a different page. “Sorry about that love, got a bit lost. This one here’s the one I meant. You can see the difference in the flux now – see, they gradually increase. The micro-kinetic stabilizers interpreted the feed-back to the disturbance ratio all dodgy."

Iris cast a helpless look at the president, but he was still glaring intently at her, expecting far more. She took a deep sigh and closed her eyes, feeling the beginnings of a headache behind her temples.

“I have been in temporal-shift orbit geosynchronously with the highest peak in the Kaldar mountain range on the third planet from your sun for two weeks now – you call it Niveus Astrum, yes? These readings come from that planet. For millennia that hunk of rock has been suspended in perpetual harmony within itself. The core is made of _highly_ unstable elements all balanced in perfection. But now something is happened to throw it off, and those highly unstable elements that are _stable_ beyond rationality are becoming highly _unstable_ – _again_!”

“Put it in layman’s terms, Lady Wildthyme; what exactly are you trying to tell us?” He snapped. Iris looked a little taken-aback, but managed to withhold the impulse to snap back. She took a deep breath, and put on the most serious expression she could muster.

“What I am trying to _say_ , President-council-leader Jeradius, is that your planet is in grave danger. More then that, your entire people are on the verge of _extinction_! And they will _continue_ to be in said danger unless you _let me help_!”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_“Day 16 - the first meeting with the council, needless to say, did not go well. They all but laughed me out of the office. Will need to regroup and formulate a better strategy. Granted, if I were them I wouldn’t have believed me either. A complete stranger, alien to boot, lands on yer doorstep and preaches your doom? Now that I think about it, I’m surprised they ain’t dragged out the anti-TARDIS tanks.”_

_“Day 18 – A few strings pulled thanks to my dear Ioan, thank Rassilon. The council has agreed to see me again, and to hear me out. Apparently their survey instruments on the ruddy planet have started giving them the same readings I’ve been picking up. It’s hard to stop myself from laughing at the irony.”_

_“Day 19 – the council pulled through, and finally admitted they could use my help late yesterday. ‘Bout time too. I was given full access to the labs and technical support; yes, ol’ Iris does have a fair bit of technical know-how. My skills with a screwdriver ain’t limited to just my secret blend of citrus juices._

_I’ve drawn up plans for a gizmo that should do the trick. History shows that Niveus Astrum’s inner stability was thrown off through some natural event. So’s all I gotta do is restabilise it, and no more big boom. A small device hooked up to their core monitoring system on Astrum should work very nicely, and won’t take long to build. Especially since I have the wonderful mathematical expertise of this nice young scientist Mikael…y’know, he reminds me so dearly of a companion I once had from E-spac-”_

Jack and Martha both blinked in surprise as the Doctor leaned forward, and pressed the Stop command with just a little more force than strictly necessary.   
The tiny light on the recording panel blinked wearily, indicating the crystal matrix was full, but the Doctor didn’t move. His whole frame was as rigid as a poker, and just as unreadable.

“Doctor?” Jack ventured after a minute.

The Doctor’s eyes flickered over the two Terrans, as though he was trying to place them. As though he had forgotten who he was with.  
Then the man’s head bowed slightly, and he dug his fingers into the bridge of his nose.

“I’m alright,” he said, in the falsely cheerful tone he often used, flashing his companions a forced smile. “The…crystal just needs to be replaced.” He sniffed purposefully and leaned forward, exchanging the ruby gem. Then, with a deep sigh to steel his nerves, he sat back and let the recording move forward.

 _“Day 23,”_ The recording said, with a great deal of weariness. _“After working four days through without rest, we’ve constructed a rough stabilizer unit. It ain’t flash or aesthetically pleasing, but it’ll do the trick. I hope. There’s no more time to spare, anyways; the planet core readings are reaching critical levels. It’s now or never. Commander Ricus has arranged our transport to Astrum. I don’t much like having to bundle into one of their old clunkers; I trust my bus a heck of a lot more then a little rocket shuttle. But the council is determined that their way is the best way. Mikael is comin’ with me. The lil’ tyke practically fawns on my heels.”_

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_Shuttlecraft R1, Day 23, Early Morning A.S.T._

“This’ll be a grand adventure, won’t it lovey?” asked Iris cheerily, taking the rocket shuttle down a little lower.

In the passenger seat, Mikael tried to smile, but his fingers were gripped into the seat cushions in sheer terror. “If you say so, m’Lady.”

Iris rolled her eyes. “Don’t call me that, Chuck! I’ve told you, you make me feel like some sort of bleeding goddess or something.” Not that she wouldn’t have minded a bit of worship from one of her time lord compatriots from time to time.

“Mrs. Wildthyme?” ventured Mikael cautiously.

“Oh, now you’re trying to insult me, is that it?” Iris laughed, leaning in as the shuttle swept along under a stream of turbulence.

“No, m’Lady,” he said hastily.

Iris made a mental note to introduce the boy to the concept of a joke when they had time.   
A sudden dip in the pit of her stomach reminded her of what they were doing up here in the first place. If they had time, she corrected mentally, if. She angled the descent of their small craft into the lower atmosphere of Astrum, and cast a glance at her companion. Her eyebrows elevated in surprise.

“Don’t tell me yer afraid of a lil’ shuttle flight, Mik?”

The lad swallowed nervously, his grip tightening till his knuckles turned white. “Flight at all makes me jumpy, ma’am. I can’t help calculate the mathematical probability of our loosing altitude at a rate far too steep for this craft’s limitations and I know the odds of surviving a head-on collision with a mountain.”

Iris laughed sympathetically. “It’s nice to know that, with the fate of the solar system in the balance, ol’ Mikael Atticustos has his priorities straight.”

“I’m strangely less comforted, Mrs. Wildthyme.”

“Mikael, if you must insist on callin’ me that, get it right: it’s Ms, not Mrs. I ain’t married.”

“Sorry, Ms. Wildthyme.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_“This is the last log entry until I return. Lord I hope it goes right.”_


	5. Backlash

The transmission log fizzled with the low, droning hiss of static for a few minutes, before performing the customary jolt of switching to the next segment.

Only there wasn’t a next segment. The Doctor sat up, a frown decorating his features with concern as he checked the tape length.

“There’s still another two hours of log space in here,” he informed his companions. “So why isn’t it playing?”

“Maybe it was damaged?” Martha offered helpfully, but Jack shook his head. “More likely the power’s run down. We should extract the whole section and take it back to the TARDIS.”

“Maybe you’re right, Jack,” The Doctor said, pulling out his sonic screwdriver. “Give us a hand here.” He moved forward and lifted off the front panel of the dash.

Suddenly a static crackle and a frantic beeping began piercing the graveyard silence of the old bus.

_“Log date…*-crackle-* L-- dat---*-snap, fizzle-*”_

Jack froze, startled. The Doctor dropped the dashboard panel on his foot in surprise and yelped.

_“~crackle, fizz~ Log date…hell, I don’t know. I’ve been out of it too long. Something’s gone wrong, terribly wrong. Video transmission is shot, audio only. Is this recording? Testing, one tw-*-fizzle-* -three.”_

“That’s not her voice,” Martha said, her voice shaking.

“No, it isn’t,” The Doctor replied slowly, alarm darkening his expression as he rooted inside the control circuits with his sonic screwdriver. “Maybe I can boost the signal, reverse and cross those wires….”

The crackling static of the audio recording cleared slightly, and the woman’s voice could be heard clear. She sounded positively terrified.

_“Log date 31 – thank you Mikael – of the Orion mission. Everything’s gone to hell. I don’t understand it; it’s not supposed to be happening like this. Rassilon, what have we done?”_

“That IS Iris!” Jack exclaimed with shock. “Different voice, same person. No one else on Venustas would’ve been able to program a message into her databanks.”

The Doctor waved a hand at him angrily, hissing. “ _Jack_ , shut up a second.”

The message, though garbled by background commotion and a trace of tear-choked tightness, was still running.

_“The…the landing on Astrum went as planned, and we touched down outside the research station within 8 hours of takeoff. A short half-hour hike through the jungle brought us to the main observational core systems, and I set to work hooking up the stabilizer.”_

_“Everything seemed to be running normally, the initial test readings were showin’ the core balance returning to normal, and I remember giving Mik a horrible embarrassment, kissin’ him full on the lips. We were all pretty giddy and knackered after so many hours without rest._

_Next I know, the entire complex is lit with this brilliant flash of white light, and the entire computer system went up in a terrific blast. I…I remember layin’ on the floor, dazed outta me mind, thinkin’ that maybe that the stabiliser overloaded – it was just a prototype. And I remember wantin’ to get up and check it, but my body just…wouldn’t obey my brain. And Mikael, all cut up and bleedin’ but he was hov’rin over me, askin if I was ok…I wanted to reassure him but…”_

There was a choked sob, cutting the transmission with a flicker of static, and a chorus of screams in the distant background.

_“The power banks couldn’t take the sudden rise of demand, but thankfully the stabiliser held up. I blacked out, I think, before the medical units got there. Bled out, I later learned – not the best way to go, really, but it was strangely…comforting, slipping away like that. I was out for six days, suspended in their form of temporal stasis until my vitals dropped down to what they decided was normal.”_

Regeneration – that unfamiliar term again. Mel had mentioned it, but she’d never gotten an answer. Martha turned her head questioningly to her two companions, but was taken aback by what she met. The Doctor had an expression on his face that looked a mixture of horror and rapt attentiveness. Jack looked vaguely ill.

“That’s why her voice sounds different,” the Time Agent murmured, voice flat and horrified. “That’s…oh god.”

The recording hiccupped and was met with a burst of static.

_“I only woke up last morning, and the world around me is falling to pieces. Pretty literally too; the entire city is in a panic. Mikael says that about three days ago, the energy readings from the Astrum monitors just spiked and went insane, with no explanation for the change._

_History said that Astrum went supernova months from now, in the original timeline._

_We only have hours, now. Astrum is roasting from the inside out._

_Oh god, what have we done?”_

The voice sounded so broken, so terrified, so alien from Iris’s normal exuberance of life. The trio were stone silent, listening as the wails of the people in the background silenced. It was as if the world was holding its breath, waiting for the end.

 _“I only hope this message reaches you – if only to put what really happened in the record books…because it can’t be stopped._ _It’s too late for us now. The plan, the entire system failed – the power levels were too massive. Far too massive, it doesn’t make sense. Time is…_ splintering _; I can_ feel it _, inside my head. You have to fix this._

_Doctor,_ **please** _, if you get this. Put things right.”_

“Iris…” the Doctor breathed, voice barely a whisper.

A new voice joined in the background, a male’s voice.  
_“Ms. Wildthyme! The city’s radiation shields, they’re failing faster then we expected! I’ve got to warn the shuttles to take off right now or else they’ll never make it!”_

 _“Mikael! Mikael, wait! Don’t leave the bus! There’s nothing you can do for them! Mikael!”_ A clatter, the crash of glass against carpet, then the unmistakable whir of the doors being opened, and shut, registered on the still-recording tape.

Then, a low, methodical grind, that sent shivers up Martha’s spine, as the bus of the past dematerialized into the void. Sent forward, pre-programmed, to its final resting place on the Eye of Orion.

For them to find.

The recording, having delivered its message, whirred slowly to a halt, and clicked into silence.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

It was Martha who found her voice first.

“Can we?”

Jack turned his head towards her, looking somewhat surprised. He looked dazed and pale, but then again he’d had training, experience. And he was Captain Jack – not a man bound to break down and cry over a message from the past. Martha could feel the cool chill of her drying tears on her cheeks, shaken free by Iris’s last panicked cries, and she breathed in with a shaking sniff as she wiped them off with her sleeve.

“Doctor, can we do what she asked?” She repeated, a bit stronger, but she still didn’t redeem a reply from the Time Lord. He still sat, while the back of his head remained expressionless to her, motionless and silent. Hesitantly, she moved forward, and touched him on the shoulder.

It was like flicking the switch to a lamp. He jumped to his feet, and ripped the crystal out of its socket, pocketing it and the previous matrix in his pinstriped jacket. “Better get this cleaned up, the power won’t last forever and I’m probably sure she pre-programmed the bus to head off into the vortex not long after the final entry was played.”

“Doctor,” Jack said softly, unheard as the man set about, flicking switches on the dash and unplugging the generator from the systems.

“Can’t leave this behind, might cause problems with the breakdown of the dimensions. Nasty things, Friulian power generators. Brilliant designs but horrible to the environment in the long run.”

“Doctor,” Martha stressed as he wrapped up the connective wiring. He refused to meet either of their gazes, moving on to pick up the shards of broken glass that had embedded themselves in the ancient shag, the last remnants to what he was sure was one of Iris’s favourite liquors.

“It really is terribly difficult trying to get glass out of carpet,” he remarked. “It works its way in and stays there, and even when you go over it with an atomic cleaner, you never seem to get it all. And then, you just know you’re bound to step on the only piece you missed –”

“Doctor, for pity’s sake answer me,” Martha pleaded exasperatedly, rising to her feet and following the Time Lord as he moved about the cabin. “Why can’t we do what she said? Y’know, go back in time to Venustas, fix the generator so that it doesn’t overload? Save all those people?”

There was a pained look on Jack’s face that was begging for the girl to stop. “Martha, I don’t think…“

Martha wasn’t listening. “You can’t just _ignore_ a cry for help like that, Doctor, she needs you.”

The Doctor stilled, his hands worrying the frayed ends of an old paisley scarf that had been tossed carelessly over the back of the passenger chair. Then he picked up the fallen jewellery box, and tenderly dusted the grime from its mahogany surface. He whispered something so soft even Jack had a hard time picking up.

Martha fumed, and stepped forward. “Doctor, stop stalling! The dust’s waited who knows how long, it can wait another five bleedin’ minutes!” She snapped, perhaps with a bit more force then she had anticipated.

“I said _not again_!” The Doctor erupted angrily, spinning to face her with such a suddenness, and such a dark look in his eyes that she jumped back, startled.  
“What you’re asking of me is impossible, Martha. Did you think even for a _second_ that if I could go back and change the course of history that I would do it? You think I _like_ loosing people, good people, people I knew and cared about? Iris, she was one of my own people. Adric, Peri, Rose –” He cut off with a choke, and flinched, taking a deep breath as he steadied his voice.   
“There are so many things, people, events that I want to change. But doing so would transgress the first Law of Time.”

Martha stared at him with a sort of wide-eyed frightened shock, as he met her gaze with a darkened, haunted sadness. “You can’t change the past, Martha Jones. Not when the future’s been written.”

Silence permeated the space between the three. It was only interrupted by the soft alert ping of the computers, indicating power levels were down to minimal levels. Jack moved forward, slowly, and picked up the generator.

The Time Lord turned his gaze away, sad eyes sweeping the dark, dusty relics of a woman he had once been at odds with, and he gave a heavy sigh. “You two head back to the TARDIS,” he said softly. “I’ll be right behind you.”  
Martha glanced at Jack with a worried look, but he ushered her out the door.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Bereft of any useful function, Martha slumped against the bus with a sigh.

Jack sighed and sat cross-legged on the grass, like some World War II pilot getting in touch with his _chi_.

“Ever heard of this Iris?” she asked, after a long moment of silence.

Jack shrugged, his eyes still closed. “Not as such. I did hear a few things about a double-decker bus in medieval England, but you’d be surprised how few things are where they’re supposed to be in time. It might have been hers, or it might have just slipped through a rift. None of the reports ever got the number.”

That was helpful.

“Do you think he was ever,” she faltered. Somehow, it just felt _wrong_ to pair the Doctor up with anyone. “You know…”

Jack cocked his head at her. “Yes?”

Martha glared at his head. “Do you reckon they were ever an item?” she asked bluntly.

Martha knew he was grinning, even without being able to see his face. “If you want my professional opinion as a life-long admirer of women,” he began.

 “And men,” Martha interrupted, “and hermaphrodites, and little amoebae things that evolved from the primordial ooze that leaked from the Doctor’s fridge.”

“Hey!” Jack objected. “Have you ever kissed an amoeba before?”

Martha shuddered. “No, and I don’t intend to.”

“You twenty-third century girls and your primitive hang-ups,” Jack shook his head, and then went on. “But, to continue with the topic at hand, I read the signs of a woman who has probably been chasing the poor Doctor for all his life. Or lives.”

“But he seems to be very fond of her,” Martha proposed lightly. “Maybe it was reciprocated.”

Jack waved a dismissive hand. “Not in the way she would have wanted. Friend, annoying young-sister type affection. Maybe a healthy dose of respect, buried somewhere under the aggravated, reluctant friendship.”

“Thus speaks Agony Aunt Jack,” laughed Martha. “You reckon you can tell all that from his tone?”

“No,” Jack admitted frankly. “I’m filling in the gaps some, but I think I’m right. And she seems to be claiming quite a few of the Doctor’s exploits for herself.”

“Oh really?” Martha cocked an eyebrow at the back of Jack’s head. “And how would you know that?”

“Elementary, my dear Jones,” Martha could sense his smirk even without looking at him, “the Doctor told me about a little trip to a place called the Death Zone when we were comparing notes on Raston Warrior Robots. Our Lady Iris figured nowhere within.”

“Cheat,” Martha said, but she knew he could hear the grin in her voice.

A lizard gave what sounded like a rasping hiccup from one corner of the bus roof, and Martha watched it idly for a moment, as it slithered down the signage announcing it to be the 22, and disappear into the clearing.

“And I wanted to ask you,” Martha said, suddenly remembering. “What’s this regeneration thing you and the Doc were talking about?”

There was another shrug from Jack’s seated form, but no answer.

“Captain Jack Harkness,” said Martha in a warning voice. “If you ignore me…”

Jack opened one eye. “Alright, alright,” he said, holding up a hand in surrender. “It’s just…well, from what the Doctor’s told me, it’s not exactly a very genteel conversation topic. Like talking about your sex life at a dinner with the queen.”

 “Queen?” asked Martha, confused. “Last time I checked, England had a king.”

Jack got up, brushing grass from his trousers. “It’s just an example,” he told her patiently. “Anyway –and this is just me guessing, by the way, the Doctor was very short on details –regeneration seems to be a process where the entire body is renewed. Every single cell is revived, altered, changed, for lack of a better word, into something else. Different body, different personality, same mind.”

Martha just stared at him. “Whoa. And I take it this is –”

“A Time Lord attribute?” Jack supplied. “Yeah. They can only do it thirteen times though, and from what the good doc let slip, he’s already been around the horn a few times.”

“How many times?” asked Martha.

Jack shrugged. “This would appear to be his ninth go. When I first met him he was a very different man then who you know.”

For a moment, all Martha could do was stare at him in a kind of blank shock.

Then finally, she blinked. “And I thought he just moisturised,” she managed.

Jack laughed. “That’s the right way to go about it,” he encouraged. “Just don’t think about it too hard, and it almost seems to mostly make sense.”

“Thanks,” said Martha, and followed his advice. “Do you think the Doctor’s all right by now?”

As if in answer to her question, the Doctor burst from the doors like a long, thin brown missile.

“Come on, you two!” he exclaimed. “Things to do, people to see –”

“Define people,” Martha requested, not moving.

The Doctor shot her a kicked-puppy dog look, and then cheered up instantly. “I’m just going to run back to the TARDIS!” he declared, and bounded off. “We need some equipment! I’ll be back in a tick.”

Within seconds, he was out of sight.

“Shouldn’t we go after him?” asked Martha. “You know, in case something tries to eat him?”

Jack shrugged. “Unless he shoves his head into the mouth of this place’s equivalent of a Gilla monster, he’ll be fine. What could possibly go wrong?”

“Loads of things. Whenever you say “what could possibly go wrong,” everything gets flushed.” Martha smirked. Then she stood up, brushing dirt off her jeans. “I’m going after him,” she announced purposefully. “I just don’t see The Laws of Time being a deterrent to his eccentric determination. There’s got to be more to this then just it being against the rules.”

Jack frowned, and climbed to his feet. “I don’t think he’s going to like it if you start asking again…” he said warily.

She was already marching off after the Doctor. “Tough cookies!”

Jack sighed and hurried after her. Someone had to play mediator.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“Alright Doctor,” Martha said loudly as she pushed past the door and loped up the ramp. The Doctor was by the console, a bundle of wires looped around his neck and sonic screwdriver between his teeth as he did…something important-looking. He looked up and blinked in surprise.

“Euh oo uh euah?” He asked. Martha sighed and reached over, removing the sonic screwdriver.

“Doctor, level with us, please,” she said, as Jack shut the door and walked up the ramp. “I understand the Laws of Time are real important. I just…don’t see you being one to really follow those sorts of rules, especially with someone’s life at stake.”

The Doctor’s expression darkened into a brooding silence. Jack decided it was time to step in. “To be honest, Doctor, I sorta agree with Martha. Not about the helping thing, mind; that was time travel 101 in the academy not to muck about with history on that scale. But there’s something else besides those laws that keeps us doing anything, isn’t there?”

With the expectant faces of Martha and Jack levelled steadily at him, the Doctor finally relented, and unlooped the wires from his neck. He set them on the console alongside the Katseye diamond, and with a heavy sigh he crossed his legs beneath him and leaned forward in the pilot’s chair.

“You remember how we were saying earlier, about the Eye being a temporal bubble?” he began, focusing his gaze on Martha and making a ball with his hands. She nodded, puzzled.

“Like how it’s sort of a Bermuda triangle in space?”

“Exactly. Now, expand it.” He widened the distance between his hands, explaining that since Gallifrey’s destruction, the whole of the universe during which he and his people had existed had been encased in a massive, invisible bubble of time. It effectively removed any trace of his race’s past from the map. Anyone outside this bubble wouldn’t notice a thing when their timeline shifted from one side of the barrier to the other. However a time-sensitive like him could feel the shift. The barrier also prevented him from crossing his own time stream at any point before the end of the Time War, when the bubble was formed.

“It used to be frighteningly easy to cross time streams. I even helped myself out quite a few times, though admittedly the Time Lords had a hand in jumping me forward or backwards along my own timeline.” He smiled in sad reminiscence. “I used to get into such arguments with myself – we could never agree on who would take the lead. But now that the Time Lords are gone, the bubble encasing the past can’t be penetrated. Do you understand now, Martha?”

“I think I do,” Martha said sullenly. “It just…doesn’t feel right, not doing anything.”

He gazed at her, gentle but stern. “I know. But like it or not, Iris and, by direct relation to her being there, Venustas and its destruction are out of our reach, our capacity to render any assistance.”

Martha gazed at him unhappily for a moment, before wrapping her arms around his neck in a warm hug. He looked surprised for a minute before squeezing her tight.

“’m sorry Doctor,” She mumbled into his coat. “I shouldn’t have asked; it’s made you all morose.”

“Nah, bright as ever, me.” He smiled cheerfully as if to prove his point, and gave her another squeeze before releasing her.

“I hate to break up the love fest, but what’s that sound?” Jack cut in abruptly, his attention focusing elsewhere.

Two pairs of eyes turned to him, the Doctor looking faintly bemused. “What sound?”

“That sound,” Jack repeated, waving his hand as he tilted his head. “A sorta soft, pulsing beep. Not the distress signal, it’s different.”

“I don’t hear anything,” Martha said dubiously, but the Doctor had already jumped up and had pulled the computer screen around the console, frowning at it.

“The radiation alarm,” he said in disbelief. “What? That can’t be right. There’s nothing to emit radiation on Orion.” He tapped out a sequence on the keyboard and blinked. “But the readings say it’s steadily climbing. Won’t be habitable out there if it keeps increasing like this.”

They were interrupted as the TARDIS suddenly lurched sideways, knocking them all off their feet. Martha managed to grab onto the console, but Jack wasn’t so lucky. He staggered down the ramp and landed at the base of the doors. Climbing to his feet he winced as he rubbed the back of his head. “What the hell was that? We’re _landed_!”

“Never mind _that_ , what’s _that_?” Martha demanded, as a loud, deep gong, like abbey bells, began resonating through the control room.

“The cloister bells!” The Doctor’s face went pale and he dashed down the ramp, yanking open the door. His eyes widened in shock. The landscape of Orion had drastically changed. The air was a boiled, toxic olive green, as lightning illuminated the dark gas clouds. The greenery and ancient ruins of the civilization that had once resided there were wiped from the earth as if they had never existed. The entire planet was inhospitable and devastated.

And a gaggle of Vortisaurs were circling the TARDIS like vultures to carrion. One of them emitted a hungry screech as it noticed the TARDIS doors had opened, and aimed to dive-bomb the time ship again.

The Doctor slammed the doors shut in a hurry and leaned back against them, looking horrified. “Vortisaurs! Oh Rassilon, she couldn’t have –”

The room bucked again as the Vortisaur rammed the craft, the cloister bells picking up urgency. The computer began flashing what looked like a warning on the screen, though it was still in that geometric language. Not hesitating a second, the Doctor was back at the controls, and lines of diagnostic code began scrolling across the screen.

“She DID. Blast it Iris! Jack, emergency dematerialization! Right now!” he barked, grabbing for a lever nearby. “Martha, hang on to something!”

As the two time travellers worked fervently in sync to begin the dematerialization sequence, the TARDIS shuddered, moaning in mechanical protest as Martha secured herself to the railing. The sounds of the time rotor sluggishly roared to life as the central column began to move up and down.  
Instantly the whole room bucked again. A great weight began pressing into Martha’s chest, like the weight of the ocean when she had gone scuba-diving long ago, back on Earth. The room itself seemed to warp and twist under the strain, and the figures of her companions blurred.

“What’s happening?!” She cried over the din of a new cacophony of alarms.

“We’re caught in the backlash! Space-time is warping and changing around the TARDIS as past events catch up to present time! We can’t break free!” The Doctor yelled back, still trying to remain on his feet as he operated the controls. “Jack, hold that down! Turn the wheel five cycles to the left, and –“

Time warped, cracked, and splintered around them. The Doctor cried out in pain, collapsing against the console as he clutched his head in his hands. The lights plunged into darkness with his cry, and Martha screamed as the cloister bells tolled their warning, a cry to battle stations as the TARDIS hurtled into the Time Vortex.


	6. Bubble Burst

_Niveus Astrum, Research Outpost 2, Day 25, Late Evening A.S.T._

“Pass me that spanner Mik – no, not that one, the other one. Sorry, wait, no, the first one.”

Nineteen-year-old Mikael Atticustos rolled his eyes good-naturedly and passed the tool into Iris’s waiting hand. They had been working on installing the stabilizer into the monitoring systems for the better par of three hours, and after the nerve-wracking shuttle flight from Advica to the Outpost, his body was finally catching up to his exhaustion. It was all he could do to stifle a yawn.

It didn’t go unnoticed by the busily tinkering Time Lady, who arched an eyebrow in the teasing manner she seemed to reserve for Mikael, and smiled sympathetically.   
“Why don’tcha shut your eyes for a quick kip there, Mikky? We’re almost done here, I can get me own tools for a while. Ye prolly ain’t used to this much excitement in one day.”

“No Ms. Wildthyme.”

“Iris,” she stressed, shaking the spanner at him in a scolding manner that was only slightly undermined by her impish grin. “You make me feel every one of my centuries, kid; it’s enough to give a girl a complex.”

Mikael blushed and climbed to his feet from the mutually shared floor, massaging his fingers into his neck to ease the stiffness from the muscles with a groan. “So this stabilizer, if it works right, it’ll catch the…chemical imbalance?” He hesitated, and received a nod from the preoccupied Iris before continuing. “Before it becomes too serious, and re-balance it with a bombardment of neutrons to the molecular structures, thus preventing the planet from doing this…supernova thing you said was going to happen?”

“Exact-a-mundo my darling Mikky, top marks,” Iris beamed, reaching for a pair of pliers and twisting something inside the casing. “Course, it can’t really be called a _supernova_ – only stars can do that. But it seems a fairly accurate representation for the scale of the explos – Wait, what do you mean ‘ _if it works right’_?”

Mikael began stammering out an apology, trying to rectify his slip of the tongue. “S-sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that Ms. Wildthyme – _Iris_ , I mean, uh, there’s always _some_ margin for error in these things, any malfunction wouldn’t be _your_ fault directly, I mean, uh, um – oh dear…”

Iris laughed and waved him off, turning back to the device and pushing a connective band into place. “Calm down Mikael, for heaven’s sake. You’re babbling. And stop apologising,” she added quickly, as he’d automatically gone to say ‘ _sorry_ ’ yet again. He snapped his mouth shut and blushed deeper.

Iris beamed and leaned back, dusting off her hands as she replaced the panel and grabbed the young scientist’s hand as she hauled herself to her feet. “Mikky-boy I think we’re in business at last. You there, plug it into the power systems.” She gestured to one of the research scientists who had been, for the most part, left standing around with nothing to do but watch in curiosity for the past four hours. Flustered, he turned to the wall and switched on the power. For a moment, nothing happened, and Iris’ face fell.

“Well if that just don’t bugger all…” she groaned, before the low buzz of the systems began thrumming through the room. Perking up with a hopeful grin, she dashed to the computers, and studied the readouts their contraption was already feeding into the databanks.

“It’s working! It’s worked! Ha-ha!” She crowed delightedly as the rest of the scientists burst into relieved chatter, and grabbed the startled Mikael, planting a joyous kiss on his forehead. “Mikky it’s actually worked!”

“B-brilliant,” he stammered, with an uncomfortable but elated grin, looking just as relieved that they weren’t all going to be incinerated. Iris laughed and glanced up through the pallid gray roof to the sky, smiling in relief.   
_Mission accomplished, Lady President. Lord I hope it helps._

She didn’t remember much after the room was engulfed in white.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_Venustas, Advica City Central Hospital, Day 26, early morning_

The painkillers provided a soothing sort of buzz in the back of his brain, but he could still feel the bandages swathing the burns on his palms, and the tingle of the stitches that decorated his temple where the roof tile had struck. They were unnerving reminders of the previous night’s horrors. Mikael couldn’t shut his eyes to rest, though he knew he should. He couldn’t erase the images from his mind.

Couldn’t wash her blood from his hands.

He’d tried. He’d really tried to save her. Iris had caught the brunt of the explosion in the lab. Shrapnel from the computers had decorated the tile floors a burnt orange-red with her blood. Alien blood, but he didn’t think on it. It was just as warm, just as life-giving as his own blood, and it had soaked through his jumper as he tried to staunch the flow, urging her to hold on till the medics arrived. And she had dazedly muttered about bananas and that… _”It’ll be ok Mikael, I’ll be alright. Don’t worry about me…”_

And then she’d changed. Before his eyes, her face, pale and listless, had illuminated in a soft white glow, and her wounds had healed beneath his hands. He’d shielded his eyes against the radiance, and when it had faded, she opened her eyes, no longer emerald green but pale as sapphires, and she’d smiled at him with a mischievous smile, as if it were all a big joke. _“Lens vivo aliquantulus diutius,”_ she’d said in Venustan. Gonna live a little longer. And then she’d promptly fainted.

Mikael sat now outside the sterile white room where they kept the stasis chambers, her jacket hugged close to his chest. The spotted fur pattern of the coat was warm and soft, and had been spared the stain of blood and soot, left behind in the shuttle. It smelled like her, all cedar-wood and the rich aroma of aged bourbon. For some reason it was comforting.

Iris had died for his planet’s safety, and been reborn before his eyes into a new woman. A woman who now lay in a deep coma, dressed in white, suspended in temporal stasis in the tank behind the glass, because the Healers didn’t know what else to do for her.   
If ever there had been such thing as an _angelus_ before, he was certain Ms. Wildthyme was one. The young scientist hugged the coat closer, and shut his eyes, whispering a prayer for his angel of time.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

_Bitter chill, looming metal monsters. No, darkness spiralling, a deep haunting laugh. The taste of blood and tiredness, bone deep. Falling through space, endless. Poisoned, hearts beating slower, slower, no, time moving faster, in and out. The bite of bullets beneath a haze. Burning, screaming, pain_ they’reallgoneallgoneallgone _– burning from the inside,_ don’tstopdon’tgodon’tlet _-_

_I bring life…_

“Jack! Can you hear me Jack? Harkness, wake up!”

Jack gasped as he bolted upright, his heart pounding wildly in his chest.

“Jack! Thank god, I was worried that you’d never come round,” Martha said with heartfelt relief, sitting back on her haunches. “How do you feel?”

His head was aching and his mind was buzzing with that odd euphoria it was always left with when the Powers-That-Be resurrected his immortal body. Had he died, again? No, he didn’t feel as if he’d died. But yet he did. He had a nasty suspicion that whispered of the twisting of alternate timelines in the back of his thoughts.  
“Like the morning after a drinking contest with the Doctor. What happened?”

“Well, as far as I can tell, the radiation alarms went off, all of the Eye was turned into a nuclear wasteland in the blink of an eye, a giant dinosaur tried to eat the TARDIS, and then everything went weird.” Martha shrugged, and Jack noticed that a cut above her left eye had already been butterfly-bandaged. How long had he been out?

“Where’s the Doc?” He asked, scrambling to his feet, and immediately regretted it as the room spun. He grabbed onto the console, and waited for things to realign before he dared letting go. Martha pointed over to a prone figure lying sprawled on the grating floor, and grabbed Jack’s arm, helping him over to the unconscious man. The Doctor looked pale but unharmed . . . and to Jack’s surprise, he saw the Time Lord appeared to be using his bundled duster as a pillow.

“He collapsed after the room snapped back into focus. That was about half an hour ago. As far as I can tell there’s no physical damage, but I’m not really skilled in xenobiology.” She frowned, His pulses were erratic for a little while but they calmed down, and he just seems to be…asleep.”

“No time to sleep on the job. I have a nasty guess that we might’ve been caught in a time corridor of some kind. I’ve got memories in my head that ain’t mine.” Jack said grimly, and touched the Doctor’s chest. “Doctor? Doctor, naptime’s over. Can you hear us? Wake up.”

The man’s eyes fluttered slightly, and he groaned imperceptibly. “Bother…I’ve got the worst headache…Turlough, tell Tegan we’ve landed…”

Jack and Martha exchanged a bemused look, and Jack shook the man’s shoulder. “No, Doctor, it’s us, Jack and Martha.”

The Doctor’s eyes open grudgingly, but Martha frowned. They were unfocused, and he didn’t seem to really see either of them.  
“Look, I know you two don’t get along very well, but if we’re going to travel together in the TARDIS, the least you can do is –”

Martha blinked. “Is it just me,” she hissed to Jack, “or is his voice different?”

Jack shrugged helpfully, and shook him again. “Doctor? Wake up, Doc!”

The Doctor blinked, and focused his gaze in confusion at the two faces peering down worriedly at him.

“You’re not Turlough,” he said, blinking rapidly.

“Nope,” agreed Jack amiably. “I’m Captain Jack Harkness, and this is Martha Jones.”

As though a switch had been thrown, the light came on in the Doctor’s face.

“Jack? Martha? ….What’s going on and why am I on the floor?”

His companions exchanged a look and Martha helped him sit up. “We were hoping you could tell us, Doctor. You collapsed. It looks like some sort of mental attack.”

He winced and pressed his hands into his eyes. “Oh. Cripes that smarts. No, no, no…wasn’t a mental attack. Afraid that’s what happens when you shred time to bits.”

“Doctor, if you start getting cryptic again, I’ll hafta thump you.”

“First things first, Martha.” He stressed, grabbing Jack’s arm and hauling himself to his feet. He wavered for a moment in his companion’s grip as the room spun, waiting for it to settle, before he stumbled into the console and grabbed the video screen. “We’ve got to find out where we are, and When. Emergency dematerialization is rather like knocking a cricket ball into the trees, you can never find it again; too much space to search.”

The video screen flickered with static for a moment before coming to life. As the eye in the light of the Police Box panned around the room, Martha was rather reminded of the pictures of historical museum holographs she’d been treated to in school trips. “It looks Roman. Could we have been knocked back in time and space to Rome?”

“Hardly,” Jack jabbed a finger at the screen. “For one, those guys have energy weapons.”

This was said with the arrival of a contingent of about six armed men in uniform, who had appeared from a corridor and surrounded the TARDIS. A seventh, tall and dark-haired with a military air, stood waiting behind them, glowering at the ship.

“This is Commander Ioannes Ricus of Advican Security Force Squadron Alpha! Whoever you are, however you got here, I am ordering you to surrender yourselves without resistance!”

Jack looked at Martha.

Martha looked at the Doctor.

The Doctor looked unwell.

“Doctor,” Martha said slowly, narrowing her eyes. “Didn’t you say this was impossible?”

The Doctor ran his hand through his hair, looking rather worried. “It’s supposed to be. Unless –” He halted. “The backlash. Yes, yes of course! The energy shockwave that rewrote the Eye of Orion, it must’ve reached a climactic axis just as we were dematerializing. The resulting pressure must’ve shot us into and through the Vortex like a cork in a champagne bottle!” He clapped his hands together. “And time ripped itself to pieces…” he trailed away. “Something Iris must’ve done here, now. It upset the balance of the universe. I thought she was the cause of the original cataclysm, but now…”

“How could what she have done on Venustas have any affect on the Eye of Orion?” Martha demanded, feeling very perplexed. Jack, however, had begun to glare at the Doctor.

“The Eye of Orion,” he said, his voice holding every ounce of the annoyance in his eyes. “That’s what you meant about ‘ _the future’s been written_ ’!” He shifted his glare to Martha, who was still looking lost.  
“Venustas doesn’t exist anymore, but the planet that it was had to have been rediscovered and renamed. We were standing on it! We haven’t jumped through space, just been thrown back a few thousand centuries. We’re transgressing our own timeline! The Eye _was_ Venustas!”

“I know.” The Doctor scowled. “And I’m sorry for not telling you but this was never supposed to happen. But somehow, some way, Iris did something that drastically altered the course of history. And now that we’re here, I’ve got an obligation to set it right.”

Martha stared at him. “You mean we have to let them burn?”

The Doctor shared a gaze with her, his eyes darkened, face sombre. “I don’t like it any better then you, Martha.” He said softly.

“So…what’s the plan?” Jack asked with a troubled tone.

He heaved a deep sigh. “We find Iris. And what better way then to ask the help of her dear friend Commander Ioannes Ricus?” He grinned manically, rubbed his hands together and grabbed his duster from the floor, pulling it on. The Katseye disappeared into his pocket from its place on the console, and he beamed at them reassuringly as he walked down the ramp.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Commander Ricus wasn’t a skeptical man. Nor was he often phased by the odd and out of place. However, had someone come to him several fortnights before, and told him that he would be faced with the potential end of the world, and that he would meet a woman, made of such eccentricity, which claimed to be the saviour of mankind, he might’ve scoffed the idea off as nonsense.   
Iris Wildthyme had the effect on people to make them start believing in such things. Like the way a two-level red automobile transportation device could materialize out of the thin of the air.

Or how a tall blue box with no physical signs of any ability to move on its own could wind up in the centre courtyard for the Advican Capitol Building. It was still enough to make his superiors very nervous.

“I repeat, this is Commander Ricus. You have landed your…craft…in a restricted area.” He barked hesitantly, frowning. It gave him a very serious expression, with his dark hair and his brown eyes that made him a man you didn’t want to mess with. “You have a thirty-count to reveal yourselves or we will break down the doors by force. Triginta. Viginti-novem. Viginti–duodeviginti. Viginti –“

The uniformed shuffle of fabric as his men tensed heralded the opening of the door on the strange blue box. From the interior, a man stepped out, hands raised halfway with a cheerful yet wary smile on his face. He was dressed as eccentrically as his craft, with a smart brown suit pinstriped with blue, white trainers, a collared navy shirt and a tie wrapped loosely around his neck.

“Ah, yes, hello Commander Ioannes Ricus of Advican Security Force Squadron Alpha,” he greeted in an odd accent, eying the energy weapons pointed at his chest. “Do hope we’re not intruding on anything.”

“It depends; what would you call landing a craft in the middle of the Capitol’s courtyard, overlooking the fact your…box has no distinguishing features to register it for any sort of travel, let alone flight?” Ioannes replied sternly, waving his hand to ease his men down. “If you’ll please sir, ask any companions with you to step out of the box as well.”

The stranger hesitated. “Who says I’ve got companions?”

“You said “we.” You will not be harmed if you provide us no trouble.”

The man grinned sheepishly. “That I did. My mistake.” As Commander Ricus’ gaze continued to glare at him, he sighed, and glanced over his shoulder, not lowering his hands. “You heard the man, Captain Jack. Come on out.”

Ioannes blinked in surprise as another man stepped out onto the polished marble floor, his hands shoved casually in the pockets of a large, militaristic great-coat. He looked rather unfazed by the weapons pointed at him, but sighed and raised his hands in the air at a look from his companion. “Ten minutes planet-side and already we’re being arrested. I think that’s a record, Doctor.”

The Doctor though, seemed to be occupied trying to discretely shut the doors behind the captain. To the Commander’s surprise though, a slim brown hand snaked out of the entrance, and held them open. 

“I think he managed five minutes, once. Remember Krimulon-19?” replied a woman, with rich cocoa skin and dark eyes, stepping through the crack she had left, and shutting the doors behind her. The first man ran a hand through his hair and rolled his eyes. She glanced a bit apprehensively at the guards as she hung back behind her two friends.

“That was fifteen minutes, thank you Martha,” The first man called Doctor replied shortly, looking a bit ruffled for a moment, and slightly irritated. “And how was I supposed to know the local regime had outlawed bananas? I mean, honestly, bananas are brilliant – good source of potassium, tasty to boot, and you can do all sorts of fun with a toothpick and a bit of trickery – now, Commander,” He suddenly turned his gaze on the officer, completely serious. “We need to see Iris Wildthyme. At once, on the double, pronto-presto. If you please.”

A ratchet of weaponry safety-locks being uncocked, and a simultaneous whine of energy packs charging, was the reply. Ioannes stepped forward, glaring darkly at the Doctor, who had taken a hurried step back, looking rather mystified. “Did I say something wrong? Don’t tell me bananas are outlawed here as well.”

“I do not know what these…bananas are that you keep babbling about. But you lot are coming with us. We’ve got some questions to ask you.”

The Doctor blinked. “Certainly, delighted to, always happy to chat.” He lowered his hands into his pockets as he ventured forward. “Out of curiosity, what about?”

“You can start walking,” said Ioannes impatiently. “Hands on your heads, and move out!”

“You remind me of a man I used to know,” complained the Doctor, returning his hands to his head. “Terrifically British, he was too. Always handy in a scrape, but hopelessly military. And no good at answering questions, infuriating like that. He always liked to keep his cards very close to his chest. Never could see past blowing things up, either, and far, far too security conscience. If you’re going to run a top-secret military base, you should expect some security leaks.”

“Doctor,” said Martha long-sufferingly. “As much fun as it is listening to your trips down memory lane, I rather think the Commander has been trying to read us our rights for the last minute and a half.”

The Doctor looked sideways to find himself under the gaze of the Commander.

“Sorry,” he apologised, “you were saying?”

Ioannes raised one eyebrow in a manner very reminiscent of the Doctor’s old friend.   
“Firstly,” he commented, “you should probably start moving, before I’m forced to conclude that you’re resisting arrest.”

The Doctor looked at the very large, very shiny weapon strapped to the Commander’s side –and started walking. Martha and Jack exchanged looks and followed.

“Secondly,” said Ioannes from behind Jack, “you are _peregrinus_ , foreigners. You have no rights.”

“Why does that sound ominous?” asked Martha, sounding slightly alarmed.

“Probably because that’s what everyone tells us,” Jack replied with a grin.

“Oi!” the Doctor tried to turn his head, found having his hands on top of it was hampering that movement, and gave it up. “It’s not my fault the entire galaxy is trigger-happy, is it?”

“It is when you insist on dancing round doing everything but singing “shoot me, shoot me,” muttered Martha rebelliously, and Jack had to stifle a laugh.

Ioannes was caught rather flat-footed by the unexpected stream of conversation, and prodded Jack in the back with his weapon, and turned them in to the main building. Jack, to his credit, managed not to stumble, and shot the Commander an indignant look.

“Hey there’s no need for that. You still haven’t answered the Doc’s question – why are we being frogmarched to Interrogation?”

“You’re here to answer some questions. We’ll start with who you are, how you got here, and what you want with the late Lady Wildthyme,” snapped the irritated officer, as the time travellers were pushed into a bleak white cell in the detention area. As the bars slid shut over the doorway, and the crackle of the energy barrier hummed to life, the two humans glanced worriedly at the Doctor.

“What did he mean by “late”?” Martha asked. “We know she’s alive, we heard the message.”

“In the previous timeline, perhaps,” The Doctor replied grimly. “But who knows what gingerbread concoction has been rewoven by her meddling now.”


	7. To Find a Time Lord, or Lady

“Right, first things first,” Jack announced, rubbing his hands together and turning on the doorway to study it. “We’ve got to get out of here. Lets see…standard energy system providing the force field, reinforced bars look electronically powered…” He reached out a hand to the barrier hesitantly. It crackled, snapped, and bit his fingers with a jolt of electricity, and he jumped back with a laugh. “Wow that packs a punch. Easy work for the sonic screwdriver though.”

“So, we sonic our way out of here, distract the guards, find Iris and fix the timeline, then back in the TARDIS and just a quick jump forward to the Eye of Orion to make sure it worked?” Martha surmised, catching on to the Agent’s plan.

Jack beamed. “Right!”

“Wrong.”

Both companions turned their heads, to look at the Doctor. He had settled on to a bench against the wall, and closed his eyes, his arms folded across his chest.

“Excuse me Doc?”

“Doc-tor. Two syllables, thank you Captain. And I said no.”

Jack scowled. “No need to bite my head off, _Doctor_. What do you mean by no? I thought that was the plan.”

The Doctor opened his eyes and sat up, a resigned look in his eyes. “Not the entire plan, Jack. There are a few minor details to sort out.” He stood up, straightening to his full height. Like his fifth incarnation, his tenth was afflicted with the boyish charm and appearance that lacked the authority of his other bodies, but his gaze, when he turned it on his two comrades, was far from childish. “Details such as it’s “I”, and not “we”, that will be doing anything.”

As anticipated, there was an outburst of protest from both humans.

“What do you mean “I not we”?! We have every right to help–”  
“This is deliberate; you’re shutting us out on purpose –”  
“It was my idea to come here in the first place; you said it was impossible–”  
“Of all the arrogant self-centred–”

The Doctor put his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly, stopping Jack and Martha mid-sentence.   
“Quiet, both of you,” he said sternly. “It’s final. Firstly, if things had gone as planned, you both would still be in the TARDIS. My little slip of the tongue dragged Jack into this, but you were supposed to stay indoors, Martha, and not get involved.” He shot a glare in her direction. She gaped at him in offence.

“Second, as you said, Ricus referred to Iris as deceased. Now, as the recording proves this contradictory to fact, it means that we’ve landed sometime after the explosion that caused her to regenerate. Since the Venustans have never witnessed or even heard about the Time Lords before, it stands to reason that this has them a tad baffled, and so they might make the mistake of considering the old Iris and the new as two separate people.”

“Makes sense,” Jack grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. “It also invariably means that her body will be under lock and key somewhere and will be three times harder to find then if she were up and walking about.”

“Ah, but I know where she is,” the Doctor smiled with smug superiority. “Probably somewhere in hospital, someplace with stasis technology and temporal shielding.”

“Temporal whatsits?” Martha repeated. “I thought the Venustans didn’t have time travel stuff yet.”

“They don’t, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have – oh never mind. I’ll explain it later.” The Doctor huffed impatiently. “The point is I know where she’s likely to be held. All I have to do is get to her, wake her up, and get her to take me to the research outpost so I can unplug her ruddy machine before it kills us all.”

Jack gawped at him, looking livid. “But…that was the plan all along!”

“Right!” Martha agreed. “So what’re we still waiting around for?”

The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets and sat back down. “Like I said before, details. We’re not breaking out. We’re going to wait patiently for Ricus to return, convince him we’re good guys – he’s a reasonable, open-minded bloke, he’ll listen.” _He’d have to be to put up with Iris’s crack stories_ , he added mentally. “He lets me out, I nab Iris, fix this mess, and we return to the TARDIS and get the heck out of dodge.”

“And just what are WE supposed to do in the meantime while you play Indiana Jones and the Stabilizer of Doom?!” Martha hollered angrily.

“You’re going to return to the TARDIS and wait for me.”

“Now wait just a minute Doctor –!”

“It’s too dangerous! I’m not going to risk both your lives on something I’m not even sure will work!” The Doctor snapped with frustration. “At least if I fail, and we’re thrown head over heels into Volcano Day, the automatic displacement systems will kick in and you’ll be sent back home.”

Jack stared at the Doctor. “You don’t expect to come back, do you?” He said in a hushed voice, grabbing the man’s arm and yanking him aside. “Doctor, this _isn’t_ an insane suicide mission. You can’t go tossing yourself into the dangerous tasks. At least let me along. I can afford it if something blows up in my face. You can’t.”

The Doctor refused to meet his eyes. Jack narrowed his, releasing his arm slowly. “Or is it something else?” He muttered. His voice hardened. “You know something more, Doctor. I can taste it radiating off you like bad cologne. What’s going to happen?”

The Doctor smiled wearily at his companion. “Sorry Jack. I need you to look out for Martha. Anyways, you’re one of the only people I trust with the TARDIS if anything should go wrong.”

Jack stared at him in silence, utterly overwhelmed by the remark.

A cough from the doorframe drew their attentions from the discussion, and all three heads turned. A young lieutenant stood with a key-card in hand, ready to open the door.

“Commander Ricus is ready to see you, sir,” he ordered, looking pointedly at the Doctor. “If you’ll please come with me to Interrogation…”

The Doctor glanced at his companions and grinned brightly. “No worries. Ol’ Alistair never doubted me and from what Iris has said, the good Commander is his spitting image. We’ll be free and clear before you can say ‘dimensionally transcendental’.”

Jack’s expression became an unreadable stony gaze and he slid his hands into his pockets as the Doctor was led down the hall. “Yeah, Doc. If only it were that easy to pronounce.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The Doctor was led down the hall from the detention area, his hands in his pockets and his gaze wandering over every nook and cranny that lined the hall. The walls were a pale off-white tan, a standard it seemed whether one was on Earth, Gallifrey, or any security organization in the galaxy.

“Taupe; why is it they always paint hallways taupe?” He wondered aloud, risking a glance at his escort. “Don’t suppose you’d know.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” the young man replied, though his tone was good-humoured. The Doctor ‘ah’’d and resumed his silence.

“They say taupe is very soothing,” the Lieutenant said after a moment more. “I always sort of wondered about that myself.”

The Doctor grinned. It was a minor triumph, but a triumph nonetheless. “I’m the Doctor, by the way,” he told his escort, offering a hand to the man companionably. “What’s your name?”

“Lieutenant Casparin, sir,” he replied, and stopped just outside a door, putting a hand out to the Doctor’s shoulder to stop him. “In here sir. Commander Ricus will be with you shortly.”

The Doctor was nudged into the room as the door opened, and he sighed – the view was not an improvement from the bleak hallway. A light source overhead, a mirror lining one wall that he was sure was double-sided, and a table with uncomfortable-looking chairs situated on either side. A tepid pitcher of water decorated the centre with a couple of glasses, and the walls were still taupe.

“Like most human bases, I swear interrogation rooms come in kits,” he observed chidingly. “Same boring table, same boring chairs, same boring colour, same old two-way.” He waggled his fingers with a grin at the mirror-that-was-not, and dragged a chair out, making himself comfortable with his converse sneakers propped casually on the edge of the table.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“What do you make of him?” Ioannes asked quietly, as Lieutenant Marcus Casparin joined him behind the two-way. The Lieutenant hesitated for a moment, watching the man in the pinstriped suit pull a strange, flattened ball on a string from his pocket and proceed to fiddle with it, letting it drop down only to be pulled back up, repeatedly.

“While I’ve never seen a stranger person, he does not have the demeanour of a terrorist, sir, nor do his companions. The one in the blue coat has an air of militaristic background, but it is not prominent and not shared by the woman. I overheard them speaking in their cell, and they mentioned a message left by the Lady Wildthyme,” he replied.

“Therein lays my concern – how do they know of her?” Ioannes muttered. Marcus frowned thoughtfully, wrinkling his nose as the Doctor put away the toy and leaned forward, sniffing the jug of water warily before pouring himself a glass. He tasted it, then subtly spat it back out and shook his head.

“His eccentricities remind me somewhat of her – it is possible they are of the same world, if they appeared in the same manner. Perhaps it is worth listening to their story, if they can shed any light on her disappearance, or unveil them to be behind the sabotage on the research station.”

The Commander nodded thoughtfully. “You could be right, . Assure we are not disturbed.”

“Yes sir.” Marcus bobbed his head in their form of a salute, and took post at the interrogation room door, as the Commander stepped into the chamber.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The Doctor looked up as the door slid open again, and he caught a brief glimpse of Lieutenant Casparin standing guard at the door before the Commander entered. Sizing him up with an amiable smile on his face, the Doctor settled back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “She was right, you do look a lot like the Brigadier,” he remarked. Ricus flicked an eyebrow at that, but otherwise gave no indication of reaction.

“So…Doctor…?” He looked at the file in his hands. “I see you didn’t give a name with your title, healer.”

“I don’t have one. It’s just ‘the Doctor’. And I’m not a doctor of medicine.”

The eyebrow flicked again. “Just ‘the Doctor’?”

“Just ‘the Doctor’.” The man in question grinned as if it were some private joke. “Of all things and some more besides, before you ask.”

“Very well, Doctor,” The Commander sighed. “That takes care of who you are. As for how you got here, the review of the vidlink system data shows your box –”

“The TARDIS,” the Doctor interjected. The Commander glared at him.   
“Very well, the video captured evidence that your _TARDIS_ appeared out of thin air, following a minor increase in atmospheric temperature and a high level of Chronon radiation levels. This is the same manner as one Miss Iris Wildthyme arrived, twelve days ago. I thus draw conclusion that you and she originate from the same civilization. Am I correct?”

“Twelve days…” The Doctor muttered, ignoring the question. “Makes it about…day 28 now…day of the power flux, two days after…” He sat up, and fixed the man with a piercing gaze.   
“Commander, I would like to be quick about this. Yes, Iris and I are both Time Lords – well, she’s a Time Lady. Same difference, really. I was sent here by our government to help her with the aid of your planet.”  
He hesitated. “Obviously I’ve arrived a little later then anticipated – you said she was dead, earlier. Dead, missing in action, AWOL, whatever you’ve categorised her as.”  
He waved a hand dismissively. “ _But_ let me guess – you’ve got an unidentified woman lying in a stasis chamber in some hospital right now, and no Iris in sight, and you’re absolutely thrown as to what to do with her because her biological makeup is far beyond anything your science has ever seen.”

The Commander stared at him. “How –?”

“’How’ requires flipcharts and slides and time we do not have. But Iris Wildthyme is not dead. And if you’ll let me see this Jane Doe of yours, I think I can prove it.” The Doctor took a deep breath, and stopped pacing, shoving his hands into his pockets as he stared expectantly at the Commander. To his credit the man didn’t look phased. A bit ruffled, perhaps, but not slack-jawed in shock.

“Doctor, I cannot confirm nor deny any of these accusations and theories you’ve come up with,” he said, in a very unassailable tone. “However, from what I have seen and heard in these past two weeks, I am willing to give you benefit of doubt. Have you any proof to your claims at the present time that might persuade me to grant this insane request of yours?”

The Doctor sighed, and shut his eyes. The last image of Iris’s face swam into his memory: weary, war-worn, but hopeful. “No, I do not, Commander Ioannes Ricus. But I would like to ask for your trust.”

The Commander was silent for a moment. Then, he nodded. “Very well Doctor.” He moved to the door, pushing it open and waiting for the Time Lord to follow. The Doctor hesitated.

“One more thing, Commander?” He asked, softer. “If you could, release my companions, and allow them to return to our craft. They aren’t a part of this.”

The Lieutenant was off down the hall at the barest glance from Ricus, and the Doctor nodded thanks, before the two men left for the capitol hospital.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“I can’t believe he just left us behind,” Martha fumed, pacing the diameter of their cell back and forth. “He actually up and left us.”

Jack had to admit he was as troubled as his companion, but nowhere near as vocal. While the young doctor ranted and grumbled and wore a hole in the floor, the Time Agent was leaning against the wall, his arms folded over his chest as he watched her. His mind was elsewhere.

“And then he actually expects us to go back to the TARDIS and wait?! Ha!” Martha hesitated in front of the door, seemed to contemplate giving the bars a good kick, then thought better of it. Good thing too. Having to perform CPR on Martha, while near the top of the list of intriguing and interesting things to do in Jack’s book, was not quite so high on the list of things he wanted to do while locked in a jail cell.

Nor would it be kosher with the Doctor’s request to keep her safe.

Time to review the facts.

Fact one: the Doctor had been worried about both of them not being planet-side. Understandable; if the deadline was reached and Niveus Astrum went critical, they could be barbecued along with the rest of the Venustans.

Fact two: the Doctor had not expected to come back. Either he knew something for positive, or he had a theory, but either way there was something that made the Time Lord nervous enough to instate fact three.

Fact three: the Doctor had entrusted him with the TARDIS. This wasn’t some temporary, help-me-with-takeoff trust – he had looked Jack in the eye and plainly told him to take off and leave him behind if things went absolutely screwy.

Well, there was no chance in hell he’d ever even consider it.

It wasn’t like the TARDIS would accept him as a pilot either. He’d seen the way the Doc acted with his ship, and it was symbiotic. If he hurt, she hurt, and vice versa. Mere immortality does not a Time Lord make.

Martha’s pacing was starting to aggravate him. “Martha, do you mind? I’m trying to think.”

Martha shot him an irritated glare. “How can you be so bleeding calm, Jack? He’s up and left us! This makes no sense at all, any of it. Why wouldn’t he want our help?”

“Very few things in time and space do make sense, especially where the Doctor is concerned. Shouting about it seldom helps.” He grunted. “He’s just trying to keep us safe.”

“Well, if you haven’t noticed, there’s no such thing as safe. Some people can be killed with a simple peanut. A _peanut_ , Jack! Tossing us into the TARDIS like a couple of children is just…just…gah!” She exclaimed in a frustrated manner, and threw up her arms, resuming her pacing.

Jack shook is head and glanced out the doorway, his ears pricking as he caught the sound of footsteps approaching. “Martha, shh, someone’s coming.”

The footsteps grew closer, and Lieutenant Casparin appeared in the doorway. Jack tensed. The keycard bleeped, and the hum of the energy barrier died. As the bars slid open, the Lieutenant stepped into the cell.

“I’m here to inform you you’re being releas–”

Jack pounced. Lieutenant Casparin let out a startled cry and crashed to the floor. Martha gawked at him.

“Jack! Was that absolutely necessary?”

“Well you wanted to get out of here, right?”

“He was letting us out anyways, you twit!”

Jack had the sense to look sheepish as they hauled the dazed Lieutenant to his feet.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“This is our patient obscura,” Ricus informed the Doctor, swinging the door open.

The Doctor looked, almost hesitantly, at the stasis tank, unsure of what he would see. What if he’d been wrong? What if it wasn’t Iris after all?

But the moment he looked at the silent figure in the tank, he knew.

The figure was slim, and vivid red-gold curls fanned out in the stasis’ circulation…but it was definitely her.

 _Freaky Time Lord voodoo powers,_ thought the Doctor, but without much humour. _Works every time._

Even in stasis, she looked like Iris. It was nothing in the body –the Doctor had never seen that before. It was a subconscious, almost subliminal vibration, what most humans might have described as an aura. The head might have been ready to tilt engagingly, the well-shaped mouth to grin infuriatingly, and begin some tall tale about the time she had single-handedly defeated the entire assorted collection of Cybermen with just a bag of explosives and an asteroid.

Unconsciously, he took a step forward, slipping his glasses onto his nose with one hand.

She looked, for once, at peace. The exhaustion of life and time and the war had been erased from her features, making her seem so much younger. Like a child. The loose curls that framed her face, drifting as if suspended in water, reached just beyond her shoulders. She was shorter then he remembered her, something she might find disconcerting when she finally woke, but her form made up for it in slenderness. The Doctor briefly wondered if she’d have an Irish accent – her new body seemed quite keen to mimic the Terran nationality so far.

Slowly, he realised Ricus was still standing to the side, watching him closely.

Well, Doctor?” he asked, once he was sure the Doctor knew he was waiting.

For a second, the Doctor couldn’t speak. Then he forced himself to act like a good little Time Lord. Detached. An observer. And certainly not someone about to be vulgar and emotional.

“Yes,” he said, drawing a level breath. “It’s Iris.”

“Well,” said Ricus briskly, “now that that’s over…”

The Doctor almost laughed at that. Apparently, this military man from a world far beyond Earth shared the Brigadier’s emotional reticence.

“I was wondering,” said the Doctor, trying to match his brusque tone, “if I might have some time alone with Iris. We…we went back a long way.”

 Uncomfortably, Ricus nodded. He turned, looked as though he were about to leave…then stopped.

“I –I know how you must feel, Doctor,” he seemed to have trouble with the words. “My…my wife was killed in an accident a few years ago. I know you two weren’t that way, whatever it pleased the Lady Iris to claim…but, well…I guess what I mean is…you look like a man who’s seen duty…”

The Doctor turned, and for the first time, gave Ricus his full attention. His eyes swept over the military figure, ordinary in every respect –from the standard issue military boots to the small moustache decorating his upper lip.

“Thank you,” he said softly. “It’s never easy for people like us, is it? We see so much death that it becomes almost expected. We almost accept it. And then –something makes it personal.”

 _Someone like Adric,_ he thought, suddenly assailed by the memory. The Alzarian who had sneaked on board his TARDIS, filling the void Romana had left, occupying the Doctor’s mind with his meddling and his magpie habits, his ingenuous naivety and desire to show the Time Lord just how clever a lesser being could be. Adric…who had not come out of one last adventure intact. 

Ricus nodded, still looking apologetic that emotions had even come up at all.

With an awkward bow of his head, he left, the door swinging soundlessly behind him.

For a long moment after he was gone, the Doctor just stared at the still woman standing so still in the stasis tube.

“Oh, Iris,” he whispered. “What have you gotten yourself into this time?”

Suddenly, he was snapped from his reverie by footsteps outside. Furtive, ashamed footsteps, as if the owner were afraid of being caught.

Moving on an instinct honed by centuries of police box travel, the Doctor slipped quietly into the shadows. If the person was here on underhanded dealing, he would be out of sight. If they weren’t…well, in darkness, there is strength, as he remembered someone telling him at one point.

The door opened soundlessly, and a boy stepped in.   
No, the Doctor corrected that thought immediately, not a boy, a man, though he might have been forgiven the mistake –the approaching figure was slim, and slightly below average height.

His hair, probably a silvery auburn in strong light, seemed to glow like polished brass in the dim room, tousled, short, and cut sensibly. He had an ordinary enough face, despite the stitch-work done to his temple, his cheeks splashed with freckles, with a small retrousse nose and expressive brown eyes. He looked like someone who was never quite ready to fully grow up –there was a naivety in the large, doe-like eyes that was rather endearing.

 _Mummy’s boy,_ thought the Doctor, but without any real rancour.

The soft brown eyes turned to Iris as she floated in stasis, and they took on a bewildering number of conflicting emotions. Guilt, pain, worry, surprise, grief, sadness…

“I wish I _knew_ ,” he burst out suddenly, not even noticing the Doctor. “I wish you could speak. What _happened_ back there?! What am I supposed to do?”

The Doctor felt the uncomfortably prod of his conscience. This was worse than opening someone’s letters, or going through their sock drawer –he was watching the naked emotions of an injured, very confused, and slightly susceptible young boy, and it had gone on long enough.

“You must be Mikael,” he said, stepping away from the wall into the light. “How’d you do?”

Mikael might be excused for looking somewhat startled that a supposedly empty room turned out to have an inhabitant –especially when the inhabitant in question looked so strange. His cheeks actually flushed with colour as he tried valiantly to stammer out a logical answer.

"Sorry, sir. I was just, checking the…you see, well, I uh…oh, dear. What's the use?" Mikael broke off half-way, the red flush spreading to his entire face and ears.

The Doctor kindly pretended not to notice. "Quite right too. You come here a lot?"

Mikael nodded. "I wish she could just tell me what’s going on…but that's stupid isn’t it? That's what my boss says, at any rate."

His strange visitor shook his head. "Oh I don't think it's stupid at all. You were…fond of Iris?"

Mikael started to nod –stopped, started shake his head –and then just settled for a shrug.  
“She was…well, she was…Iris.”

He didn't say anything more, but he didn't need to. The man nodded.  
"Iris doesn't exactly fit into a neat little box, does she?"

“No, sir,” Mikael agreed. “Did you know her?”

The man nodded. “For longer than you could even begin to imagine…” he trailed off, then blinked, as if suddenly distilling one fact in particular from his sentence.

“And don’t call me sir,” he added. “I’m the Doctor.”

The Doctor couldn't have gotten a more profound reaction if he had announced that Zeus Almighty had stopped off at Venustus for a coffee before the day's work.

“ _Vos nunquam dico verum_ ,” Mikael choked. “Are you –are you serious?! You’re _the_ Doctor?!”

“In the flesh.” The man grinned in a rather proud manner.

Suspicion clouded the boy’s eyes. “You don’t look like him. The Doctor, I mean. Iris mentioned him once, she said he had curly brown hair and wore green...”

The man before him sighed, and Mikael had the sudden feeling he went through this a lot.

“Yes, I am the Doctor. However, the logistics of how He and I are the same man would probably blow your pre-hyperspace mind.”

“You could try me,” Mikael suggested hopefully.

“I have better things to do,” the Doctor grumbled, “then try and teach Shakespeare to monkeys.”

Mikael didn’t know the reference, but he could guess what monkeys were, and he knew an insult when he heard one. As suddenly as the mind changes, the “Doctor” seemed to have developed a completely new personality.

“A rude one,” he muttered to himself.

The Doctor’s head went up, even though logically, Mikael knew he couldn’t have possibly heard him.

“What did you say?” he demanded, face annoyed.

“Nothing, nothing sir,” he said hastily, feeling his blush spread, and wishing for the millionth time he wasn’t so easily flustered.

“You said I was rude!” the Doctor sounded genuinely shocked. “Rude? Me!”

With nowhere left to retreat to, Mikael said boldly, “Well, you were. And I thought rudeness was supposed to be an attribute of red-heads,” he pointed at the stasis tank. “She’s being an awful lot more companionable than you are.”

 As if he had stuck a pin into a bladder ball, the Doctor deflated.

“Rude and not ginger,” he whispered, but the words made no sense to Mikael.

Then the winds changed again. This man who called himself the Doctor seemed to almost bounce of the walls.

“Okay, Mikky-boy,” he said cheerily. “Let’s just set a few things straight. You were with Iris when she…err, changed?”

Mikael nodded, not daring to take offence at the “Mikky-boy”. “Yes, sir – Doctor. Not that I believe you…I mean, Iris said you were…different…”

The Doctor sighed. “This would be the same Iris who has inexplicably changed bodies?”

Mikael quickly shook his head. “She didn’t change bodies!” he protested. “She couldn’t have! It’s impossible! I never saw anything!”

By the satisfied look in the Doctor’s eyes, Mikael knew immediately he had said something he shouldn’t have.

“I never said you did see anything,” he pointed out. “But now that you mention it…what did you see, Mikael? What physical law did you watch break?”

“Changing bodies is impossible!” protested Mikael, but with less conviction.

“Of course it is,” agreed the man before him. “And do you know what? I’m probably the only one on this planet who’ll believe you when you say you saw the impossible.”

Mikael sighed, slowly deflating. “I saw her change,” he admitted. “Or, I thought I did anyway. There was this white light, and Iris was hurt, and blood was everywhere, and –” He was starting to grow somewhat panic-stricken again.

The Doctor held up a hand. “It’s all right,” he said, voice soft. “I’m here to help.”

Mikael had to be sure though. "You're…you’re really HER Doctor?"

A slight frown crossed the Doctor's face. "I didn't exactly _belong_ to her in the first place. But I knew her, yes."

For the first time, Mikael smiled.

"That's exactly the sort of thing you _would_ say. After she'd turned you down all those times…it must be very embarrassing."

The Doctor seemed to choke on the air he was breathing. “Turned…d– turned down?!” he coughed, eyes popping out of his head. “Why of all the –” With great effort, he pulled himself together.

Mikael seemed to sense the Doctor wasn’t thrilled about something, and he looked down, fidgeting as he moved a step closer to the stasis tank.  
His brown eyes left the Doctor as he laid a bandaged hand on the cool glass, feeling the chill and the gentle buzz that came with the displacement field soothing the ache of his burns. “Is…she going to be alright?” he asked quietly.

The question seemed to sober the Doctor, who moved forward, reaching a hand up towards the glass as if to brush away a lock of ginger curls that obscured the woman’s softly sleeping eyes, before he let it drop.

“I wish I knew Mikael,” the Doctor’s voice was frustrated, “but I’m just not sure.” He turned to Mikael, an even smile on his face. Mikael blinked, and wondered if he’d imagined the sadness in the man’s eyes. “How do these chambers work, anyways?”

Mikael hesitated. “Well…it’s difficult to explain. I’m not a medical student, just a scientist. I couldn’t begin to tell you how it does what it does, but –”

“Just do your best, Mikael. That’s all I need, a basic idea.”

Mikael sighed and explained, rather haphazardly, that the chamber generated its own temporal displacement. The system was an offshoot of technology founded from xenotechnology, a decade or so ago, built by one Professor Erus who had vanished mysteriously soon after completion. The chamber took the patient out of the normal flow of time to cease the onslaught of dangerous diseases until a solution or cure could be found.

“Like advanced cryogenics…absolutely brilliant…dangerous, yes, but just amazing,” the Doctor muttered in wonder. “Can we release her from it?”

“It would be dangerous, Doctor. She was in a comatose state when they put her in there. It might...” he trailed off. It needed not be said – there was no telling what the shock would do to her systems post-regeneration.

Unfortunately, if the roles were reversed, Iris would’ve stopped at nothing to wake him up.

“Well, Iris,” he sighed, taking a step towards the chamber and withdrawing the sonic screwdriver from his pocket, “you’ve got yourself into a fine mess. Dragged me into it, no less, so as much as I love this peaceful, quiet side of you, I’m afraid I’ll have to interrupt your beauty sleep. Let’s meet the man behind the mask, so to speak.” He fiddled with the controls, and pressed a hand to the glass of the chamber.

The room lurched and the space in front of his eyes blossomed into an unidentifiable rainbow of colours. With a startled cry, the Doctor staggered back as if he’d been electrocuted, collapsing to his knees.

“Doctor!” Mikael cried out, darting forward.

“No! Mikael, stay back!” The Doctor ordered, blinking furiously to clear his vision as he climbed to his feet. His head was pounding. “Blast. I should’ve guessed.”

“A-are you al-alright?” Mikael moved hesitantly forward, but stopped just short of touching the Time Lord.

“I’ll be fine. I just wasn’t expecting that,” he reassured the boy, rubbing his temple as he studiously stared at the stasis chamber. “Don’t come near here.”

“W-what happened? You touched the chamber and it was like you had a fit or something.”

“It wasn’t me having the fit, it was Time,” the Doctor replied shortly. “This is more then temporal suspension, Mikael. Iris is completely displaced out of what you and I understand as natural time and space. She’s between the dimensions, so time is moving differently for her. To us she just appears to be suspended, but it’s far more advanced then that.”  
His gaze had become a worried frown. “Way too advanced, and dangerous. We stamped this out back on my planet long before the War…”

“And the displacement is making Time go…wonky?” Mikael ventured, looking lost. The Doctor shook his head.

“Wonky isn’t technical enough for this. No, it’s Iris herself that’s making the very elasticity of the web stretch to its limits. Like the biggest universal acid trip ever.”

“Why do you think its happening?”

“Well, if I had to hazard a guess…” The Doctor sighed, his face grim. “It’s really the only explanation for it. Right now, in the linear timeline Iris is supposed to be in, the ‘Me’ that Iris knows is on Arcadia.”

Mikael knit his brow in confusion. “You’re making absolutely no sense Doctor.”

“No, I suppose I’m not,” He sighed. “I can’t expect you to know any of this. In truth its better you don’t know. But what happened there began a shift in the order of time itself, and now history is trying to pull Iris out of Venustas and place her in her proper place. It can’t find her, though, because of the dimensional displacement.”

“So how are we supposed to get her out?”

“You ask a lot of questions, Mikky.” The Doctor grunted, shucking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. Cautiously he waved his hand a few centimetres off of the glass. “Yes, I can feel the distortion now. I might just be able to pull her forward enough to cancel the effect, like adding a bit more elastic to a rubber band so that it’ll fit around the rubber band ball. Just don’t touch me. This might very well be the last thing I do; I’m not very adept in manipulating the Web in this body; wouldn’t want you to get pulled into the chronometric weave.”

Mikael hurriedly took a step backwards and wrung his hands together nervously. “I think maybe I should get the Commander…”

“Best not.” The Doctor glanced over his shoulder with a mad smile. “Just trust me.”

And he pressed both hands to the glass.


	8. Enter the Matrix, Neo

Once they had shaken the molested Lieutenant out of his daze, Martha and Jack had been escorted to the main lobby of Security HQ, in energy-bond handcuffs that set Jack’s eyes dancing with innuendo. He tried to charm his way out of them and into a Sergeant’s quarters.

It turned out the Venustan security detail weren’t as flexible as the 51st century guy.

After a great deal of bargaining and profuse apology for Jack’s behaviour, Martha had managed not to get them re-arrested for both attacking and flirting with an officer of the law. When it was discovered the nurse on staff wasn’t available to see to Lieutenant Casparin’s minor head injury, Martha had quickly mentioned she was a doctor on her planet, and would be happy to tend to him.

“Sorry again about the head,” Jack apologised for the fifth time, smiling wryly in his natural charismatic way at Casparin. “Call it a nervous reflex to being locked up. Old military habits, you understand.”

The Lieutenant smiled back, slightly cynically, and grimaced as Martha dabbed the lump on his skill with painkiller. “Completely…though you didn’t have to hit me quite so hard.”

“I could kiss it better if you like.”

“Jack, I swear, pack it in before I make sure you can’t have children.” Martha shot, before focusing back on her work, applying the dressing and stepping down. “Alright Lieutenant, I think that’ll do. You don’t have a concussion, at least, but that bump’ll hurt a bit for a few days. I advise taking it easy.”

“You’re the healer,” he replied, rising to his feet and glancing between Jack and Martha. “Since your friend the Doctor is busy with other matters, can I interest you in an escorted tour of Advica? Take in the sights of our fair city?”

“Sounds great,” Martha said enthusiastically, at the same time that Jack replied “No thanks.”  
Martha shot him a surprised look, and he pulled her aside.

“Jack, the Doctor won’t be back for hours. We could take in the local colour, get a bite to eat. Get souvenirs,” she stressed, looking hopeful.

“Absolutely not,” Jack said firmly. “The Doctor said back to the TARDIS. Every second we’re amidst the locals we risk trouble. You’re new to this, Jones, I know your type, and I’ll explain something to you. The past is a gingerbread house: every opportunity to change something for the better seems so sweet, too good to pass up. But if you decide to take a taste of the candy-floss bushes, the old crone inside will want to barbeque your behind.” He paused. “Even if it is a very attractive behind.”

Martha thumped his chest crossly. “Stop it Jack. You don’t know everything. What if we’re supposed to do something here and now and we don’t? What if that’s what tosses everything in the mixer?”

“And what if, believing that, we do that ‘something’ and THAT is what screws us over?” Jack glared at her. “You’ve had all of a few months travelling in time and space. The Doc and I have had a few centuries. Why not take my word for something for once when I say it’s a bad idea?”

She scowled at him, but her pout was more hurt then defiant. Lieutenant Casparin cleared his throat awkwardly.

“I won’t even pretend to understand what you’re whispering about…even though I can hear pretty much everything you’re saying,” he said. “What’ll it be then?”

Jack looked firmly at Martha.  
Martha avoided his gaze, shifting her weight uneasily from one leg to the other.  
Jack sighed and looked up. “We’ll be returning to the TARDIS, Lieutenant. The big blue box we arrived in. Right, Martha?”

“Yeah, I guess…” she mumbled sulkily. “Sorry Lieutenant.”

“It’s Marcus, actually, " Casparin replied. “And that’s fine. I’ve a report to fill out anyways. I’ll have someone escort you to where we relocated your…TARDIS.” He bowed his head and left the room, leaving the two humans alone. Jack cast a glance at Martha, and sighed.

“It’s really for the best, Jones.”

She shot him an ice-cold glare. “For the next two hours, you do not have the right to even talk to me, Jonathan Harkness.”

He watched her storm out with a small air of puzzlement.  
“Jonathan?”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Hex and Ace had once forced him to use the TARDIS for personal gain, he recalled, in one of their rare moments of sensible lunacy. They had badgered him into going to the early twenty-first century to visit the premiere of a movie called The Matrix. Hex had enjoyed it as a kid, and Ace had decided it sounded just “brill,” and between the two of them he was powerless to refuse. In retrospect, perhaps they had picked up a tad too much of his manipulative mannerisms in his seventh body while travelling with him.

All he could personally remember of the event, aside from the *- _ahem_ -* _unfortunate_ incident with the Halibraxen Nerf Rat and the buttered popcorn, was that he had sat there muttering about the inaccuracies and simplified explanations behind the entire plot. The real Matrix, the Matrix in the Panopticon on Gallifrey, was ten times more complex and twenty-thousand times more infinite in brilliance, in his opinion – and he should know; he’d been inside it more then his fair share.

So there was something to be said when he decided that what was lain out before him now made the Panopticon Matrix look like a game of Snakes and Ladders.

Raw Vortex energy interwove itself together into a visible spiders web that made up the universe, past and present and future all blending together, yet remaining separate in a way that was enough to make a person go mad looking at it.

Fortunately, he was a Time Lord, and so was spared.

He’d forgotten how intoxicating the feeling could be, however. The ability to touch the fabric of the universe, to reach out and manipulate something just so…

His hand was stretched forward before he could even realise what his mind was telling it to do, and before he could yank it back, it came in contact with the glittering mist of time.

_Fire, fire everywhere, in his mind, in his mind, Rassilon! So much death and so much blood, blood on his body and in the air and in his mouth and he’d never bee free from it, never be free from the stink of innocent blood on his hands and there was_

_Screaming, and bodies and people dying and the sharp metallic smell of death and particle weapons and_

_nononononononoyoucantleave us please don’tleaveusdon’tgodon’tgodon’tgivein_

_I’m sorry_

_Wetrustedyou we depended on you we loved WEDIEDFORYOU_

_I’m sorry, I’m so sorry . . ._

With a shuddering gasp, he wrenched his arm back.

For a moment, he just stood there, breathing heavily, drenched with a cold sweat.

 _Get a grip, Doctor,_ he admonished himself. _It’s not real. These are memories, fragments of memories, nothing more. The warped, extended ghosts of the Time War, nothing more. Nothing more and nothing that’s real. Not any more._

Maybe, if he kept thinking it, he’d eventually believe it.

 _But I suppose you’ve learned lesson one about the temporal-astral plane_ , he thought, with an attempt at his normal humour, _don’t touch the time strands._

He couldn’t restrain an involuntary shiver as he remembered that, if this crazy plan was going to work, he would need to do exactly that.

The Doctor forced himself to concentrate, shaking the euphoria from his mind and focusing his twelfth and sixteenth senses on the time strands themselves.  
The layout of the room slowly swam into view, ghosts and shadows of their tangible counterparts making up the shapeless forms of cabinets, beds, and medical supplies. Everything glittered and glowed with molecular energy – even his own body, he noted, shining with the blue and red and gold of the vortex. He grinned, and stretched his senses forward, reaching out to take hold of the similar strands, the blended, interwoven triple-helix of Iris’s aura that radiated from the glass case.

Gradually, he began pulling them into his own, chasing away the warping flashes of silver that hungered to take her as just another victim of the War. But they were not letting her go without a fight, and slowly she began to slip from his grasp.

“Oh no you don’t,” he growled, tugging fiercely back on the time strands. “I’m not loosing her twice.”  
The fabric of space-time rippled as he grunted under the strain as, with a final cry of exertion, he yanked back on the weave, and his head was flooded with white-hot power. The Doctor howled, and released the strands, clutching his head in his hands as the shadowed astral world tunnelled into darkness.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Jack heaved a sigh, leaving through the pages of an original hardcover copy of some 21st century novel. He wasn’t quite sure how vampires on another planet in a branch dimension related to the 1930’s Chicago scene, but it was better then nothing. Nothing, of course, being the ice-cold shoulder he was getting from Martha’s general direction. After they had returned to the TARDIS, she had stormed off to get cleaned up, and then vanished into the small library, where Jack found her an hour later.

“Martha,” he began.

“Shh.”

“You can’t keep me silent forever.”

“Shh!”

“I was only trying to make a logical standpoint.”

“Your two hours aren’t up Harkness. Shut it before I have to hurt you.”

Jack sighed again and snapped the book shut, closing the chapter on the feisty Miss Ace and the Professor. “My name isn’t Jonathan.”

Martha looked up, confusing knit into her frown. “What?”

“Earlier. You called me Jonathan. It isn’t. It’s just Jack.” He smirked slightly and leaned over to glance at her reading material curiously. “May I ask what idea is in your head to prompt such devout attention to literature this fine evening? Or,” he amended as he opened her mouth, “would that violate the silent treatment rules?”

She scowled at him but shoved the open tome she had been reading across the table anyways. “Take a glance at that, Jack.”

“What am I looking for?” he cocked his head as he skimmed the lettering.

“You’re the seasoned time traveller. You tell me.” She crossed her arms and watched him expectantly. He sighed, again, (it seemed to be becoming a habit around her), and began to read out loud.

“In the linear year 3096, the solar system of Orion was cataclysmically altered when the third planet K-489XD, so titled Niveus Astrum, underwent a molecular shift at its central core. The perfected balance between chemical elements P3-974 and PX-0287 was shifted, beginning a chain reaction that spread outwards from the centre of the planet. This caused tremors between the three tectonic plates, which in turn created volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, and toxic conditions in the atmosphere.” He blinked. “Well, that’s helpful.”

“Keep reading,” she urged, waving a hand impatiently.

“The Orion system was home to one intelligent B-class society on the fifth planet from their star, Venustas. The Venustans were monitoring the stability of Niveus Astrum for some time, and so were able to predict the time to total meltdown. From the time that the changes were beginning to be felt physically, they began evacuating citizens from the solar system using what few shuttle rockets that could make the journey. Approximate t–” He paused, rereading the last line of the paragraph slowly.

“…Approximate time given for planet K-489XD to turn critical, 3 linear months…”

Jack looked up at Martha with alarm and she nodded, pulling the book back and reading the next paragraph herself.

“The planet became a fireball and exploded with fifty times the destructive force of a neutron bomb, decimating its two smaller moons. The resulting shockwave bombarded Venustas with a high level of radiation and ion particles, and the intense heat killed everything left on the planet’s surface instantly. However, the damage was not permanent, as Venustas was subjected to accelerated evolution due to a temporal instability created by the destruction of planet K-489XD. In a matter of a few linear centuries, plant and small animal life had returned, and the planet was recharted and renamed,” she finished in a low voice, and looked up at Jack. “Notice anything wrong?”

“The time frame,” he said instantly. “Three months to evacuate everyone because they had the time. But we don’t have that time anymore; it’s set to blow in a couple of days. And the damage we saw, that looked far worse then just a fifty-plus N-bomb. Martha, where did you get this?”

“It was lying on the table when I came in. The cover said ‘Matrix Database’ and it had a bunch of code on it. Probably the volume number and historical frame – it’s like a history book for all of time.” Martha sat back, looking both smug and very concerned. “That’s it then. That’s the paradox. In this timeline, they didn’t evacuate and the explosion was greater.”

Suddenly she sat up straight, a light coming on in her head. “Jack, that’s it! The Doctor’s gone to fix the stabilizer, so that’ll make the boom less destructive, but from what I know about chemistry, the damage is already done. The planet is still gonna go boom in a few days’ time, just not a giant boom. They won’t have time to evacuate, and THAT is what brought the _Reapers_! People who were dead who shouldn’t have been dead.”

Jack frowned. “You’re right…” He leapt to his feet briskly. “Unless we do something about it! C’mon!”

She stared at him. “What happened to all that nonsense about ‘not doing anything in case we did something wrong’?”

“It’s still applicable. However, now we know what has to be fixed in order to maintain the events.” He smiled. “You’ll make a decent time traveller yet, Jones.”

She smirked back derisively. Then, it faded. “Sorry about snapping earlier. You were right; I really am a newbie at this.”

“Not a problem, angel. I recon I was a bit more edgy then I should’ve been.” Jack shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You’re learning, faster then I ever did, which I envy you for by the way.”

She chuckled. Then she paused, tilting her head. “What did you mean, earlier, when you said you have centuries of experience?”

Jack’s only response was to turn tail and flee the library under the excuse of seeing if the Doctor had returned yet.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“Doctor?”

A concerned voice floated into the haze of his consciousness, rousing the Time Lord from the black.

“Doctor, this is Mikael. I-if you c-can hear me, give some k-kind of indication.”

_Mikael..._

The Doctor sat up quite suddenly, startling the young scientist not for the first time that day as he gasped, pulling in a deep lungful of air and panting slightly. He groaned as he rubbed his forehead, pressing his hand to the right, then the left side of his chest. Both pulses strong, if a little faster then he liked.

“What a rush,” he breathed, laughing slightly. “Remind me not to do that again anytime soon. Mikael, you ok?” When he got no immediate reply, he finally noticed Mikael’s pale complexion, his frightened eyes, and the fact that he himself had somehow wound up sprawled on his back on the dingy gray carpet.

As if sensing the question, Mikael shook his head. “Y-you cried out, fainted. I feared...well, I didn’t want to loose two people in the span of one solar day...”

The Doctor grinned and climbed to his feet. “You won’t even loose one, Mikky. I did it. Got myself a headache the size of Skaro, but I did it.”

Mikael stared in confusion. “But she’s still...” He gestured vaguely at the temporal chamber.

“A trivial detail, Mikky-boy. It should be safe enough to wake her, now that Time isn’t trying to take a bite out of her. Like taffy. Now that’s an odd thought, Iris-flavoured taffy. Boggles the mind to come up with a flavour that describes Iris. For some reason, strawberry-lemon seems fitting. That or something with pineap– What?”

Mikael was giving him a completely lost look. “I don’t even know what taffy is, Doctor,” he said with some frustration. “Can you wake her up or not?”

“Hold your horses; I’m working on it...” He muttered as he picked up the data-screen connected to the chamber, and pulled his sonic screwdriver from the pocket.   
Mikael watched with a mixture of fascination and worry as the screwdriver did its work, rewriting codes and bypassing security systems. With a mechanical _cha-clunk_ , the release clamps unlocked and the tank was lowered on rails and laid horizontally on the revitalizing table. A soft hiss accompanied the stabilization of the atmospheres, and the warm buzz of the temporal field slowly faded. The Doctor raised the glass hood, and let out a nervous breath as he brushed that stray lock of hair out of her face. He pressed his fingers against Iris’s pale skin, feeling for her pulses. “Come on Iris...”

Several minutes passed as he waited, so quietly, for that tiny double-beat that would send blood trickling through her veins. With every unresponsive second, his optimism faded.

“Well?” Mikael asked impatiently, after five minutes had passed, eagerness in his voice. “How is –”

The Doctor stilled, and his head dropped, as he steadied himself against the edge of the bed.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”  
Mikael wondered who he was apologising to – him, Iris, or that small part of himself he had dared to allow hope that she would make it.

“She…she can’t be…not after everything…” he protested, grabbing the data screen and attempting to bring up her vitals, to tell, to show the Doctor that this was _Iris_ he was talking about, and nothing short of a nuclear holocaust could finish off Iris Wildthyme.

But then he saw the desolate _aloneness_ on the Doctor’s face, and stopped.

“The systems only confirm what we already know, Mikael.” he said hollowly. “It was a long shot to try something so insane. She should’ve revived immediately. But I can’t get a heartbeat. ...From either of them.”

His voice nearly cracked, but then he mastered it. “She’s gone.”

The data pad clattered to the floor and gave a protesting bleep at the rough treatment. Mikael didn’t bother to pick it up.

“No...” came the soft denial, barely a whisper. The Doctor shut his eyes, leaning just a bit heavier on the edge of the tank as he gazed at his old friend’s still face.

_He’d failed. He’d failed her. Just like he had so long ago, when Romana had given him Arcadia. And later, when she –when it had almost been the end._

_There were too many deaths in his memory. Too many faces, and he knew them all._

_And now…and now, it was Iris._

“Goodbye...” he whispered softly, and he leaned down, pressing a light and grieving kiss to her pale forehead. _And if we should meet again, in my future and your past, I hope you can forgive me._

Slowly he straightened, sniffing softly as he pushed sorrow from the forefront of his thoughts, and turned to Mikael.

“Come on Mikael,” he said, as the young man continued to stare at Iris’s body in silent shock. “We might’ve failed Iris, but we still have a job to do before we can grieve. We owe it to her to fix things here.”

“Fix? ...Fix what?” Mikael glanced at him, rubbing tears from his cheeks as he tried to get himself under control.

Before the Doctor could answer, a solitary sound cut the silence of the chamber room.

_*-Beep.-*_


	9. Meeting Ms. Wildthyme

_*-Beep.-*_

Both men stilled quite suddenly as the soft sound penetrated the silence that the deactivated chamber had brought upon the room.

_*-Beep.-*_

“What’s that?” Mikael whispered, swallowing the lump in his throat.

_*-Ba-beep, beep, ba-beep.-*_

The Doctor, frozen for only a second, snatched the data pad from the floor. The beep, beating out a slowly strengthening rhythm, grew louder as the speakers were uncovered.

“It’s the cardiogram,” the Doctor said in disbelief and awe, turning the pad around so that Mikael could see. Mikael let out an involuntary laugh of joy; where moments before the readings had proclaimed the tank’s occupant to be dead there was now a weak but steady pulse dancing its way across the screen.

The Doctor was speechless, dazed for a second, his brain unable to find the proper balance between amazement, glee, and infuriation.

“There are some days I just adore that woman’s infernal stubbornness!” He finally exclaimed triumphantly, passing the data pad into Mikael’s hands and bounding over to Iris. The pulse-beat was stronger now, and gaining rhythm and she inhaled her first shuddered breath as her body roused itself from hibernation.

“That-a-girl, fight the good fight.” He couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.

“She’s going to be ok?” Mikael asked, with wide eyes and a grin to match the Doctor’s. He was clutching the data pad so tight his fingers were turning white.   
The Doctor nodded and removed the computer from his grip before it broke. “She is indeed, Mikky-boy! You can’t keep Iris Wildthyme down, not even from death!”

The figure on the bed groaned softly.

“She’ll probably want to sleep a few hours, but I’ll risk her wrath, I think, considering we’re short on time,” the Time Lord told the Venustan. “She might be a little…disoriented and loopy for a short time, but that’s just the after-effects of her…change.” He leaned over the cabinet.

"Iris," the Doctor coaxed gently, taking her chin in his hand and patting her cheek gently. "Iris, it’s time to wake up now. Beauty sleep’s over and done."

Iris's eyes flickered open, very slightly. They were a soft sapphire blue, but very groggy-looking.  She shut them again and mumbled something inarticulate.

The Doctor frowned and shook her shoulder lightly. She seemed to have fallen unconscious again. Switching the setting on his sonic screwdriver, he leaned up and pried one of her eyelids open gently, shining the light into her pupil.

She slapped his hands away irritably and moaned in protest.

“Oi, watch where you’re pointing that thing, that’s bright that is.” She grumbled wearily, squinting up at the Doctor. He smiled down at her in relief.

“How are you feeling Iris?”

She blinked up at him dumbly for a moment. Then she shrieked in fright.

“Who the ‘eck are you?! Get away from me, ye bloody perv!” She lashed out with the strength of a woman not entirely solid on all the facts and with a distinct feeling of being taken advantage of in a weakened state. The Doctor reeled back in shock, rubbing his cheek to rid it of the sting from the blow.

That woman could make Jackie Tyler proud.

The panicky woman bolted upright and stumbled out of the capsule, making a beeline for the door.

At least, it had been the plan. In actuality she got one foot onto the cool, whitewashed floor of the stasis room, and her knees buckled as she flung out a grab for the edge of the tank. At the same moment, two pairs of hands grabbed her beneath the arms and around the waist, and steadied her on her feet.

“Nice to see you haven’t lost your touch. Get her on the bed Mikael,” the Doctor said dryly, wincing as he touched the red mark blossomed over his face. The two men helped the confused Time Lady to a nearby spare cot, and the Doctor grabbed her shoulders gently to sit her down. She immediately began to struggle against his grip, swearing obscenities he was sure the High Council would’ve been appalled to hear uttered.

“Get your bloody hands off me! Who do you think you are?! What’s going on?! Help! Ioan!”

“She had to start yelling his name,” Mikael groaned. “The Commander has ears like a bat. I give him five minutes before he starts banging on that door.”

As if on cue, the unmistakeable sound of a fist pounding against the heavy door started rapping angrily away. “What’s going on in there? Why is this door locked?”

The Doctor cast a look over at the young scientist. Mikael shut his eyes painfully. “Did I say minutes?”

“I don’t want him in here. He’ll start jumping to conclusions and that’ll only escalate our current problem,” the Doctor said sharply, tossing the sonic screwdriver to the man. “Buy us a bit of time. Just hold the button down and press it to the lock.”

Mikael nodded and dashed to the door, but he wasn’t quick enough. The door burst inward, and the boy stumbled back, hiding the device behind his back as the Commander took in the scene.

“What in blazes is going on here?” he demanded. Iris let out a terrified shriek and the Doctor grabbed her before she could bolt, ignoring the intrusion of the guard.

“Iris!” he urged, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look him in the eyes. “Iris, no one is going to hurt you. You’re safe. It’s me, for Rassilon’s sake. It’s the Doctor!”

She stopped struggling, her eyes darting furtively in apprehension and fear as they searched his face. He smiled gently, his eyebrows rising in a hopeful expression.

“D…Doctor?” she stumbled hesitantly, her fingers tightening their weak grip on the sleeve of his pinstriped suit. He gave her a bright grin, encouraging.

“Yes it’s me. Mikael too. You remember Mikael?”

Mikael gave a shy wave.

Iris Wildthyme was silent all of five seconds before she gave a howl and launched herself into his chest, clinging rather too tight for the Time Lord’s liking. He gave a surprised grunt and grimaced, returning the embrace resignedly.

“Oh _DOCTAH_ , I never thought I’d **SEE** you again! The bloody war and Romana orderin’ us off and then the **DALEKS** were all over the planet and – oh my dear lord but what are you doing _here_?”

She pushed herself back and stared at him with horror.

“You’re supposed to be off at Arcadia and- oh my lord you’ve _regenerated_ again, what happened?!” A pause.

“Wait…Mikael…there was...and then I…”

The Doctor gazed patiently into her eyes as a look of abstract alarm crossed into her eyes, and her fingers tightened on his arms.

“D-Doctor, what’s going on, why are you here and what...am _I_ …doing...here?”

She trailed off, and swallowed hard, and the Doctor sensed it even before it happened.

“Whoa, easy there,” he warned, catching her quickly as her legs buckled, and helped her back over to the cot.

“I’m drunk, is that it? I’ve had one too many shots of Romulan whiskey and I’m having hallucinations.” She grabbed at his coat sleeves.

“You’re not drunk. You just aren’t quite back to strength yet. Gotta give it time.”

“’Back to strength’? What the hell are you talking about, you idiot? Start giving me straight answers, for the love of Rassilon,” She complained, slapping his hands away. It was obvious, at least to those who knew her, that despite the brave facade, the way her eyes were darting about with that flicker of fearful confusion meant she was realizing something was very, very _wrong_.

“Those are questions I’d rather like answered as well,” Ricus growled, holstering his weapon. “I don’t much like being ignored.”

“Alright,” the Doctor interjected, before anyone else could say a word. “Let’s take this one step at a time. Iris,” he turned to her, levelling his eye-line with hers, “what’s the last thing you can remember?”

She frowned, wrinkled her nose. “Gets a bit hazy…but I remember getting onto the shuttle with Mikael. We were heading to Niveus Astrum to do the…thing with the…thing. . .” she petered off into a mumble. The Doctor gave her a sympathetic look.

“Brace yourself, luv,” he said. “You’ve been in temporal stasis for the past two days.”  
When she stared at him in utter astonishment, he steeled himself for the next bit, and pulled a small hand-mirror from his pocket, holding it up for her to view her reflection.

He hadn’t thought it actually possible to leave Iris Wildthyme utterly speechless.

She reached up a hand, combing it through her long red tresses, brushing her fingers over her skin, as if she couldn’t believe the fact.  
“…How…?” she finally managed to squeak, looking up at the three men who were watching her. Mikael and the Doctor exchanged a hesitant look.

“I suppose since I was present, I should go first,” Mikael offered with subdued decision.

At a grateful and encouraging nod, Mikael began recapping the events as he remembered. He managed to get through the installation, the initial good readings, and the celebration, however short. It wasn’t until the memories of the actual regeneration surfaced that he began to balk.

“The computer banks overloaded – I think it was a glitch in the program. And there was this explosion. You were closest to the blast and you g-got thrown across the room…I t-tried to s-save you, I swear I d-did…there was j-just s-so much blood…”  
Mikael began to shake uncontrollably, his face paling dramatically as he sat down.

Alarmed, Iris laid a hand on his arm and pulled him into a comforting hug – something both the Doctor and the Commander were surprised to witness.

“Shh, its okay, Mikky; I think can piece together what happened from there,” she said soothingly, shooting a glance at the Doctor. “Alright, so that explains the regeneration. So why the hell are you here?”

The Doctor nodded and gave Iris a quick run-through on everything he knew – finding her bus on Orion, explaining the logs she had left behind, the sudden shift in history that altered the entire landscape, and the backlash that had brought him and his companions back in time. He had to explain the temporal bubble theory after that, as Iris had looked at him with an utterly blank expression, and she’d stopped him there.

The Doctor stilled, a flicker of shadow passing over his face before he glanced at Ricus. “Commander, would you excuse us a moment? Take Mikael – get him a cup of tea or something, please.”

Ricus’ first instinct was to protest. But that look was back in the Time Lord’s eyes, the one that made him trust the man, and so although he scowled, the Commander pushed Mikael out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Iris watched them go with a measure of confusion. Her blue eyes glanced up at the Doctor as he paced the room slowly, hands in his pockets in distress.

“How are you feeling Iris?” he asked gently.

Iris frowned at him. “Never mind me, chuck, what’s wrong with you? Why won’t you look at me? Is my new body that bad?” she asked, with a weak attempt at humour.

The Doctor looked at her for a second, and then his eyes bounced away, as though he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes.

Iris dropped the light-hearted front. “What’s going on, Doctor?” she asked with definite worry in her voice. “What happened? What aren’t you telling me?”

He turned around, and inhaled deeply. “We lost.”

He continued to speak even as she covered her mouth with her hands, paling white. “The final solution was enacted. The Eye was unharnessed, and the Daleks burned. And we burned with them.” He gave a bitter laugh, and sat down on the bed next to her, and his next words were so soft she barely caught them. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. No more home planet.”

She stared at him with blank horror in her eyes. “S-so…Gallifrey is…in your timeline…” He nodded solemnly. She ran her fingers through her curls, trying to process the information.

“Gone...my god...it’s unfathomable...” She looked up at him, her blue eyes threatening to spill tears over her cheeks again. “Oh Doctor…”

He shrugged and looked away, his eyes darkened, haunted by the memories. “Don’t, Iris. I’m fine.” He looked back at her with a shadow of a grin that didn’t make it to his eyes. “And you’re fine too. Had a hell of a time waking you up; did you have to slap me so hard?” He rubbed his cheek with an exaggerated wince and she smiled slightly.

“Sorry…wasn’t thinking straight. Won’t do it again, p…promise…” Her half-laugh turned into a sob, and she buried her face in her hands, bawling. He sighed gently and sat down beside her on the bed, hugging her in comfort and tolerating the domestics of letting her soak the shoulder of his jacket.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she mumbled sadly, sniffing and drying her eyes with the pristine white sleeve of her hospital scrubs. “It’s the shock I suppose; gets me all frilly and emotional.”

“Most likely; you’ll be right as rain soon,” he agreed. “And back to annoying me into an early regeneration.”

She huffed. “Oh, same old Doctor, cheeky as ever. But don’tche worry; I know in your hearts you’re just coverin’ up yer true feelin’s.” She winked at him and allowed a smile to flicker onto her face. The Doctor sighed long-sufferingly.

“Iris, if you keep that up you’ll be rapidly loosing any grounds I might’ve previously given you as to how long I’m putting off lecturing you about the importance of obeying the Laws of Time our Lady President felt necessary to ignore.”

Her head snapped up and the smile vanished. “What?”

He stared at her with a measure of incredulity. “Were you _listening_ when I got to the bit about Reapers on Orion, utter devastation, history being unravelled, time thrown out of joint?”

“Of course I was listening! I don’t think it’s fair to blame ME for that!”

“Right, because you were just following orders!”  
  
“Yes I was!” Iris retorted angrily, her breath coming fast. “Just like you were following orders on Arcadia.”

The Doctor stiffened as though she had slapped him a second time, his expressive brown eyes freezing over in an instant. It was a low blow, and Iris knew it.

She held a hand out tentatively, looking guilty and just a little concerned at the sudden change in her fellow Time Lord. What exactly had happened on Arcadia after she had – after she had lost contact?

Either the Doctor didn’t see the hand, or he chose to ignore it.

“We ought to get back to my TARDIS,” he said coldly, not looking at her as he stood. She might have not even been there. “Get sorted and come up with a plan to sort out this epitome of stupidity.”

“Fine,” she said shortly, but she couldn’t shake the chill that had encased her spine. She breathed a deep, cleansing lungful of hospital air as the door clicked open again. A quick glance at the doorway revealed Mikael waiting uncomfortably.  
Suddenly she snapped her head back at the Doctor. “Mikael comes with us. And don’t you dare protest,” she snapped, jabbing a finger at him. “He’s got more at stake in this then any of us.”

The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at her. “I’d forgotten how much you grate my nerves,” he muttered, but some of the darkness lifted, and his tone was well-natured. He just couldn’t stay angry with her. How could he? After so long, he could feel the presence of another Time Lord mind in his – if not actually through the Matrix – and it was almost exhilarating, and at the same time, warmly comforting. Like a life raft after so many years in a dark and chilly sea. It made it impossible to maintain negative thoughts with that almost-forgotten luxury back with him.

“Good. Glad that’s settled.” She got up, wavered for a minute unsteadily and put a hand on Mikael’s shoulder as she let her new legs grow used to the movement. Then she grinned energetically at her young companion. “Mikael, find dear Ioan for me, would you? And tell him we’re heading back to the Doctor’s TARDIS to review some important information. I shan’t think he’d like it if I up and just vanished from supposedly being dead.”

Mikael smiled with a nod and darted for the doorway. He paused, however, at the doorframe, and glanced at an object lying in a lump on one of the chairs. Hesitantly, he picked it up, glanced back at Iris, and returned to her.

“It was left in the shuttle…I grabbed it before they could bunch it with your other clothes for the incinerator…” He said softly.

Iris’s eyes lit up and she grinned fondly, taking the tattered old leopard-spotted coat as if it were a priceless treasure. “Oh, my coat! Thank you Mikael.” She shrugged it on over her scrubs, and tucked it close, even though the sleeves now draped over her hands. She’d lost a few inches and gained a few pounds, but it didn’t matter. Iris pulled the boy into a tight hug and a smooch on the forehead. “Couldn’t very well go traipsing across the capitol in my bedclothes, could I?”

Mikael blushed and scampered out the door to find the Commander. Iris made to follow, but glanced back at the Doctor. “Coming, Doctor?”

The Doctor smiled with a sigh and followed her out.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“Alright, so if we sneak in here, and make our way along this corridor...”

“No, no, that wouldn’t work; they’d have guards posted there. Anyways it’d be easier walking through the front door and asking.”

“Bureaucrats in any corner of the galaxy love red tape; by the time we got in to see someone of consequence we’d be crispy.”

“But if we get caught sneaking in through ducts and the like, we’d be tossed in jail again and have the same problem.”

“Fine, don’t listen to the Time Agent with years of experience.” Jack snorted and folded his arms.

“According to the Doctor you went AWOL and were conning people out of fake spaceships when he met you.”

Martha grinned impishly at Jack’s affronted look of shock. He narrowed his eyes playfully.

“You really know how to take a man down, Jones.”

She beamed. “I try. Now,” she turned her attention back to the computer, which Jack had managed to link into the Capitol’s main data cortex and pulled schematics for the council building. They had been planning their move, figuring out how to convince the leaders to evacuate. She groaned, rubbing her fingers into her stiff neck, and glared at the screen.

“There has to be a way in that doesn’t involve jail.”

The TARDIS gave an odd chirp, and the readout changed. She sat up quickly, as Jack leaned in. They stared at the information, and shared an inspired smile.

“Perfect.”


	10. In Which Plans are Made

“Well I’ll tell you one thing. The minute the Doctor gets back, I say we shove this in his nose. He’d deserve it, keeping us on the sidelines like this.”

“As much as I want to disagree with you and take the man’s side in this, that idea is sounding better and better. I’m going nuts just sitting around here waiting for him to play hero.”

Martha sighed and jumped to her feet. “Well I’m not sitting around. I’m going to the library. We’ll need proof to show off if we’re pulling this off properly.”

“Good thinking.” Jack nodded as she strolled off into the interior of the ship, and crossed his arms over his chest. His grumbling line of thought was interrupted by the snick of a key being shoved into a lock. The TARDIS hum rose and fell in frequency ever so slightly and the man straightened up from the captain’s chair, prepared thoroughly to give the Doctor a solid I-told-you-so argument. He had it worked out too, right down to every word.

“Well, it looks like your theory fell through,” he began rather sardonically. Then he stopped short, both in speech and stride, as the door opened and Mikael’s wide blue eyes locked with his own.

“Oh dear,” the young man murmured in shock, staring up at the massive size of the room. “Now that’s just…”

“Budge up there Mik,” the Doctor said from behind the boy, and the young scientist stumbled up the ramp and past Jack, making way for the Time Lord. The alien had his hand around the waist of a ginger-haired woman in a familiar leopard coat and hospital scrubs, steadying her gait. The woman looked rather aggravated.

“This is completely undignified,” she groused.

“I did try to warn you, y’know,” the Doctor remarked in a tone of smug concern, shutting the door behind him with his foot. “It’s not my fault your legs aren’t adapted to your weight yet.”

“Well I am still not an invalid! Let go of me,” she snapped, pushing his hands off her and standing there in defiance for a moment before she grabbed the railing. She took in the TARDIS with a fair amount of familiarity, displeasure in her gaze - unlike the boy, of course, who was staring slack-jawed at the ceiling of the control room.

“How did all THIS fit into that little box?” He said, awestruck.

“Dimensional transcendentalism, Mikael, the same concept as my old bus,” answered the woman, running her hand along the coral construct of a support structure. “Lord, Doc, how’d you get her in a state like this? Even that gothic structure your Scottish self set up was well-kept.”

Jack watched the Doctor’s face shut down. “Parts are hard to find just recently,” he answered shortly.

It might have been Jack’s imagination, but he thought he saw a flash of something almost akin to the Doctor’s expression flicker across Iris’ face –a sort of guilty remorse, mixed with a reluctance to dwell on it –but then it was gone, before Jack could properly process it.

“Never mind, Doc,” she smiled broadly. “It never went where you wanted it to anyway, you know.”

“Must you keep calling me Doc?” the man sighed, choosing to ignore the slur on his ability to drive his beloved time machine. “Jack, hello; where’s Martha?”

Jack still felt a little confused, and had to process the question for a second before he could find his voice. “Uh, in the library… Doctor, what’s…?”

“Ah, yes, introductions,” The Doctor clapped his shoulder with a hand and beamed, the mood of a second ago already forgotten. “Jack Harkness, meet Iris Wildthyme.”

Jack was thrown for a moment before he grinned, his eyebrows rising in playful mischief.   
“What, this beautiful creature? Doctor, you hound.” He chuckled at the man’s exasperated roll of the eyes, and took Iris’s hand, giving it a kiss. “I thought I knew the voice; delighted to finally meet you, Miss Wildthyme.”

She chuckled coyly and flashed him a devilish grin. “Similarly, Mister Harkness, though I can’t say I’d heard of you in return. He’s a charmer, Doc, where’d you pick him up?”

“Here and there,” Jack replied with a smirk. “And it’s Captain. Time Agent – former, that is – fifty-first century.”

Iris whistled appreciatively and beamed. “That explains everything then.” She beckoned Mikael over and put an arm round his shoulders. “This is Mikael.”

Mikael ducked his head shyly. “Nice t-to meet you.”

Jack grinned and shook his hand. “Likewise.”

“Jack! Do you got some kind of carry-bag for the – oh, hello.” Martha halted two steps into the room and blinked, looking taken-aback at the sudden crowd in the control room. “Doctor, welcome back; everything settled then?”

“Unfortunately, no,” the Doctor grated, looking impatient. “Iris, can we save the socialising for later? There is a more pressing matter…”

“Stuff it Doctor. The fixing can wait five minutes. Hello dear, I’m Iris.” This was directed at Martha with a warm grin, as Iris shook her hand. “Just like men, isn’t it, tossing us about without so-much as a by-your-leave? Really; I’m in my pyjamas and he wants to talk about the end of the world.”

“There’s nothing wrong with pyjamas, Iris, can we _focus_?”

“So you’re Mikael?” Jack grinned sociably at the young scientist, who still looked a bit shell-shocked. “Taking all this in stride, I’m impressed.”

“…oh, _Iris_! Right! From the videotapes.” Martha grinned, shaking her hand, looking enthused. “You don’t look a thing like the earlier entries, of course, but Jack explained it all, and I was doing a bit of research in the library. I know all about regeneration; it’s really most fascinating. A complete voluntary cellular breakdown and reconstruction in a matter of hours, minutes even – I was wondering, could I ask you a few personal questions about what it’s like…”

The Doctor looked appalled. “Martha, please!”

“It’s just so different. I mean, I’ve been in Miss Wildthyme’s bus, and it’s a bit bigger then it should be by rights, but it still looks like what she says a bus looks like. This…” Mikael breathed an impressed sigh. “Just…wow.”

“Ah no it’s all right luv, you ask me anything you want. Good on ye for doin’ your homework.” Iris beamed, rather enjoying the attention, and pointedly ignoring the desperate agitation that was slowly enveloping the Doctor’s expression. “But perhaps later, yes? Right now I was wonderin’ if you’d point me in the direction of the baths. For all the ramshackle this TARDIS is now I doubt it’s where it should be.”

“Sure; just down the corridor, a left, a right, and a right, just past the kitchen.”

A sharp whistle made everyone stop chattering, and all eyes turned on the Doctor. He huffed.

“That’s better. In case you had all forgotten, we are on a _time limit_ here.” He focused a glare on Iris. “If you must insist on wasting time with your looks, be _quick_ , Iris. Martha, please help her out. She’s not entirely _stable_ yet.” He stressed the words purposefully, and for a moment Iris looked resentful. She sniffed and allowed Martha to take her arm. The two women disappeared into the bowels of the ship. The Doctor groaned and turned his glare on Jack next, just in time to see him lean back from Mikael, who was, rather suggestively, flushed red up to his ears.

“Jack, stop flirting.”

The man blinked. “I was just being friendly.”

“For you, that’s flirting.” The Doctor sighed. “I need you to set up the computer to play back the final recorded log entries prior and following Iris’s accident on the data crystals. I haven’t told her about the plan yet, and I think I’ll need the help to convince her.”

Jack smirked one last time at the Venustan before he turned and started working at the controls. “You’re the boss Doc.”

“What should I do, Doctor Sir?”

The Doctor could feel the beginnings of a secondary headache twinge his consciousness, overlapping the dull ache that still lingered from the trip back in time and his magic act in the hospital, and smiled wearily at Mikael. “You can help me out, Mikael. Iris said you’re good with maths and computer systems – can you tell me everything you can remember about the specifics of the Astrum project?”

Mikael thought for a moment then nodded. “I think so sir.”

“Good lad.” He exhaled heavily, and brightened. “Well, if we’ve got a moment to spare, I suppose we can all do with a good cup of tea.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The face was a stranger, staring back at her. The blue eyes were unfamiliar, the hair a shade of ginger she’d never had before, with a natural curl to the ends. She felt shorter, and the height difference made things seem just that little bit larger. Though it was all natural, it still bothered Iris just a tiny bit. She had led a long, fruitful life in her last body. And in honesty to herself, she had never expected to have another one.

But then again, today seemed to be a day of change. New Iris, new Doctor, new life to get used to. Well, what life there was left to live.  
The thought chilled her. She was nothing more then a temporal anomaly now, sustained by the Doctor’s presence weaving into her existence and keeping her on his side of the bubble, in a universe where Gallifrey had fallen. It was a high likelihood that, if she attempted to leave the safety of the Orion system, time would reassert itself, and Iris Wildthyme would simply cease to exist.

A fact the Doctor knew all too well, she was sure.

Studying her new outfit in the mirror, she smoothed the wrinkles from the autumn-patterned skirt, and nodded in satisfaction. The ankle-length garment, paired with an off-white blouse and sturdy shoes, seemed fitting. And it matched her old coat. Although she had lost some of her taste for outfits outrageous and brightly coloured, Iris Wildthyme without her trademark leopard coat seemed…unfinished.

She really needed to stop thinking of herself in the third person.

A softly cleared throat from the doorway of the wardrobe chamber drew her attention rather suddenly, and she gasped slightly. Martha smiled apologetically, sticking her hands in her back pockets as she walked up the ramp. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Everything alright?”

Iris smiled and nodded her head sheepishly. “Yes, just…lost in my own thoughts.” She turned back to the mirror, giving her face consideration. Was it one that fit makeup?

Martha smiled in amusement, sitting down on the edge of an old trunk. “I know how that feels.” Her gaze ran along the curvatures of the wardrobe’s winding staircase. “No matter how many times I come in here I’m just amazed. He sure does accumulate a lot of clothing. I wonder how many outfits are actually his.”

“At least nine of them, I’m sure.” Iris grinned fondly, the smile fading as she brushed her fingers against the dark leather of a jacket hanging from the coat stand. It smelled distantly of old cigarettes and rich liquor, and overlaying that, a stronger odor of mechanical work and faint perfume. Fitz’s jacket…but worn recently, though the boy had left the Doctor years ago. The realization made her curious.  
Iris realised she was drifting out of focus again and shook herself back to reality. “I’m sorry dear, I keep dozing off. Did the Doctor need me for something?”

Martha shook her head. “He’s still puttering away in the console room. Mikael is laying out a detailed schematic of your stabilizer’s control systems on the computer.”

“To find the bug in the power system, I expect. If we fix that then it shouldn’t overload the storage banks and the problem should fix itself.”

“Actually, he’s going to disable it.”

Iris spun around with the speed of a striking rattlesnake. “Say what?”

Martha gave her a perplexed look. “I…thought you knew. The Doctor’s going to disconnect the stabiliser to set history back on track.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Like HELL he is,” Iris growled, snatching her coat from the rack. Her new skirt swished with presence around her ankles as she stormed from the wardrobe.

Martha was left with a sudden sinking feeling that she had just started a nuclear war.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“YOU RAT BASTARD!”

The Doctor looked up from his discussion with Jack with a slightly distracted expression. It didn’t stay distracted for long.

“What the hell –?!” managed Jack.

The Doctor didn’t manage to say anything at all –he was too busy ducking backwards to avoid a vicious punch that would have quite probably have severed his head from its shoulders. Leaping sideways with a skill that would have impressed an acrobat, he managed to get the console between him and Iris.

“Iris, have you gone mad?” he asked incredulously. “What have I done now?!”

“How DARE you!” she bellowed. Iris had always had a prodigious pair of lungs, and this regeneration was obviously no exception. “You damn idiot back-stabbing Shobogan scum! I won’t let you ruin months of hard work, and let Gallifrey burn! Not again! I’ll see you regenerate first, you lousy, lying skunk of a moron –”

Jack stood well clear, watching her with the sort of expression he usually reserved for Weevils, or Gwen in one of her ‘moods’. As Iris whipped around the console to try and get to the Doctor, Jack jumped hastily out of the road. Those nails looked worrying sharp.

A sound from the door alerted him to a new presence, and he turned to see…Martha, looking at him with a sheepish expression.

The Doctor had noticed too. In between avoiding Iris, and trying to keep her slashing hands away from any delicate bits of the TARDIS, he stared at her.

“Martha…” he said warningly.

“I’m sorry,” she apologised, trying not to gape at two Time Lords playing ring-a-ring-a-rosy around the console. “It just slipped out! I didn’t know she’d flip!”

“Gee, you think?” asked the Doctor rudely, and then jumped sharply sideways to avoid Iris. “I told you she wasn’t stable! Iris, you’re not thinking clearly. Calm down and let’s talk about this.”

“You are not taking the only chance that these people have to save their civilization, and you are not the god of Gallifrey’s fate,” she hissed at him.

“Wait, what?” Mikael’s input was sudden –for most of the display, he had stood like a stone statue, trying to accept that Iris had apparently gone irrevocably insane.  
“What are you saying, Miss Wildthyme? That he’s going to disconnect the device? Why?” He turned to look at the man. “I thought it fixed everything.”

“No,” the Doctor corrected tersely, as he moved to keep the console between him and the furious Time Lady. “It was just a temporary measure that doesn’t work properly because _someone_ ,” and his voice raised a few volume levels as he glared at Iris, “was playing with fire she shouldn’t have touched in the first place!”

Iris looked at him with open scorn, panting with anger and exertion.

“Oh, she said acidly, “but it wasn’t a problem until _you_ heard about it! I never should have made those logs –all it did was invite _Lord President_ Doctor to get on his moral high horse, and tell us what we can and can’t do!”

“Iris,” the Doctor made an effort to keep hold of his temper. “It’s not like that. You don’t know what you’re doing –”

Iris was almost spitting now. “But you do, right?” she hissed. “Because of course, the Doctor knows best. The Doctor always does the flaming noble thing, because the Doctor is the only one who could ever understand all this stuff, because I’m just a Wildthyme, right Doctor? I couldn’t possibly understand things a noble Lungbarrow like you could, could I?”

“This isn’t about me, Iris.” The Doctor’s grip on his temper was failing fast.

Don’t give me that!” Iris had lowered her voice now, but her eyes still shot blind fury, and her voice was as searing as a wall of fire. “It’s _always_ about you! Thorn in the side of the high council, the renegade Prydonian wandering through time and space. _Ka Faraq Gatri_ I think it was the Daleks called you! I bet you like the worship that comes with the titles. How does godhood _feel_ , Doctor? Does it make you all warm and fuzzy inside?”

Jack looked at the Doctor’s face…and felt his blood chill. For just a second, there was something terrible and old and completely implacable staring out of those innocent brown eyes.  
Then it was gone –all but the cold fury. It dropped the room temperature fifteen degrees. Slowly, he moved around the console, his gaze never leaving Iris’s. She stood strong, but there was a flicker of apprehension as he approached her, stopping a mere foot away. He had height over her this time around, and for all his boyish looks, he looked downright menacing.

“Two words, Iris,” he said, and his voice only shook a little. “Predestined. Paradox.”

She blinked, some of the rage dying from her eyes with the introduction of confusion. “…What?”

The computer’s speakers crackled to life.

_“Log date…*-crackle-* L-- dat---*-snap, fizzle-*”_

Both Iris and the Doctor looked up, meeting Jack’s gaze. Hesitantly, he moved his hand away from the activation switch. It had felt like the right thing to do.

_“*-crackle, fizz-* Log date…hell, I don’t know. I’ve been out of it too long. Something’s gone wrong, terribly wrong. Video transmission is shot, audio only. Is this recording? Testing, one tw-*-fizzle-* -three.”_

Iris stepped away from the Doctor as her own voice echoed back at her, staring at the console in stark confusion.

_“Log date 31 – thank you Mikael – of the Orion mission. Everything’s gone to hell. I don’t understand it; it’s not supposed to be happening like this. Rassilon, what have we done?”_

_“The…the landing on Astrum went as planned, and we touched down outside the research station within 8 hours of takeoff. A short half-hour hike through the jungle brought us to the main observational core systems, and I set to work hooking up the stabilizer.”_

_“Everything seemed to be running normally, the initial test readings were showin’ the core balance returning to normal, and I remember giving Mik a horrible embarrassment, kissin’ him full on the lips. We were all pretty giddy and knackered after so many hours without rest._

_Next I know, the entire complex is lit with this brilliant flash of white light, and the entire computer system went up in a terrific blast. I…I remember layin’ on the floor, dazed outta me mind, thinkin’ that maybe that the stabiliser overloaded – it was just a prototype. And I remember wantin’ to get up and check it, but my body just…wouldn’t obey my brain. And Mikael, all cut up and bleedin’ but he was hov’rin over me, askin if I was ok…I wanted to reassure him but…”_

“What is this?” She asked, her voice no louder then a whisper now. The Doctor gazed at her with a level of sorrow, the swirling fury in his eyes slowing to the calm of a circling storm. When he replied, his voice was just as quiet.

“Your last entry.”

_“The power banks couldn’t take the sudden rise of demand, but thankfully the stabiliser held up. I blacked out, I think, before the medical units got there. Bled out, I later learned – not the best way to go, really, but it was strangely…comforting, slipping away like that. I was out for six days, suspended in their form of temporal stasis until my vitals dropped down to what they decided was normal.”_

_“I only woke up last morning, and the world around me is falling to pieces. Pretty literally too; the entire city is in a panic. Mikael says that about three days ago, the energy readings from the Astrum monitors just spiked and went insane, with no explanation for the change. History said that Astrum went supernova months from now, in the original timeline. We only have hours, now. Astrum is roasting from the inside out. Oh god, what have we done?”_

“That’s not what happened, though,” Mikael said softly. “We woke her up sooner then that. None of this happened.”

“It did,” Jack said, his eyes never leaving the Doctor. “This recording was at the end of the logs. It survived the shift in the timeline because it was inside the TARDIS – our TARDIS,” he amended with a slight frown.

 _“I only hope this message reaches you – if only to put what really happened in the record books…because it can’t be stopped._ _It’s too late for us now. The plan, the entire system failed – the power levels were too massive. Far too massive, it doesn’t make sense. Time is…_ splintering _; I can_ feel it _, inside my head. You have to fix this._

_Doctor,_ **please** _, if you get this. Put things right.”_

Iris’s blue eyes welled with tears as she covered her mouth with her hands, a sob escaping her throat. Her voice echoed back at her tinnily through the speakers, terrified and absolutely shattered. The Doctor stood by, all trace of his anger gone.

“You asked me to come here and fix history, Iris. If I don’t…” He let the sentence hang in the air, his words soft. She shivered and dropped her hands, hugging herself tightly as she fought tears.

“I know…oh god, Doctor, I’m sorry. What I said…–”

For a moment, the Doctor looked inscrutable. Then, with one of his lightning mood changes, he looked at her with a gentle, carefree grin. Looking at him, it seemed impossible that the cold anger had ever been there, written in his eyes like daggers of ice.

“You didn’t mean it, I know. It’s the regeneration, scrambles your head a bit.”

_“Ms. Wildthyme! The city’s radiation shields, they’re failing faster then we expected! I’ve got to warn the shuttles to take off right now or else they’ll never make it!”_

_“Mikael! Mikael, wait! Don’t leave the bus! There’s nothing you can do for them! Mikael!”_

Jack hurriedly shut the speakers off, and stepped back, looking guilty. “Sorry.”

Mikael had turned an unhealthy shade of pale white and, out of concern that he might faint, Martha hurriedly pulled him onto the captain’s chair. “Breathe, Mikael. Nice slow breaths, that’s it.”

It took a few minutes for the young man to compose himself, his hands trembling as he breathed deeply. “Oh gods…that was my voice on there. The screams in the background…is that what’s going to happen to us?” He looked up at the time travellers. “Miss Wildthyme? Iris?”

Iris slowly lowered her hands, wringing them uncomfortably as she sat down next to him. “Not if we can help it,” she replied softly. The room was silent for a moment, in unspoken agreement. She glanced up at the Doctor. “We need a plan though. We can’t use our TARDISes to get to Niveus Astrum. Yours is insanely unpredictable, and mine is locked into the timeline.”

Jack and Martha exchanged a glance, and Martha smiled thoughtfully. “We might have something.” All eyes turned on her. “Borrow a shuttlecraft.”

The Doctor smiled with a hint of pride. “Not a bad idea – saves red tape, at the least. Alright, Iris, you and I will go to Astrum. Mikael too, if you think you’re up to it…” he glanced at the boy, who nodded firmly.

“Doctor, that’s not quite all,” Martha began, rising, before Jack cut her off.   
“Better be out of here then, Doctor. We haven’t got the time to hang around chatting.”

The Doctor caught Jack’s gaze for a moment, and something flickered through his expression, before vanishing with his determined nod. He picked his duster from the railing, shrugging it over his shoulders. Iris rose, pulling Mikael to his feet, and took a last glance around the TARDIS interior before she headed after the Time Lord, out the door.

Martha growled and dashed out after them. “Doctor!”

But the Doctor, Iris, and Mikael were already running off across the pavement, looking remarkably like an action hero team as they disappeared around the corner. She frowned and crossed her arms, leaning against the TARDIS door as Jack stepped from the interior.

“Off to save the world, without us. Jack, you didn’t let me tell him about the evacuation,” she accused him. “Why not?”

“What the Doctor doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” the Time Agent replied, slinging a carry-sack over his shoulder. “I promised I’d look out for you. If the Doctor thinks you’re out here, running around with doomsday on the horizon, then he’ll be just distracted enough to make a mistake.”

“Doomsday?”

The sudden voice made both companions jump. Commander Ricus gazed at them, his expression one part amused, one part calm, and ten parts irritated. “Captain Harkness, would you care to elaborate on your statement?”

Years of life outside service hadn’t dulled the Captain’s automatic reflexes. The authoritative tone found his muscles stiffening without volunteer, but his face brightened into a carefully honed grin.

“Ah, Commander; just the man I was hoping to find.”

The officer’s gaze didn’t waver. “You haven’t answered my question, Captain.”

“Unfortunately it’s a very long story and we really don’t have the time right now –”

“Captain,” Ricus said forcefully, stepping closer. “This is my planet, my home, my people. I know that Iris came here to stop something from happening – exactly what, I don’t know. But I have the feeling that something’s gone wrong. If there is anything I can do to help my people, I will, and not even the gods could stop me from doing so.”

Jack stared at the man for a moment with new admiration, before glancing at Martha. She nodded. He returned his eyes to Ricus’ stoic expression.

“Very well, Commander,” he agreed. “But we’ll have to explain on the fly. Martha will fill you in.”

Martha grinned and took the man’s arm, leading him away from the TARDIS as Jack strode ahead towards the capitol. “It all started just a day or so ago, linearly, when we received this distress call…”


	11. The Secret of Niveus Astrum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major MAJOR props to Emery this chapter, who came up with the whole Arcadia conversation. Without her this story would suck worse than it does.

The difference between the plans they had sorted out working in theory, and actually working, turned out to be a simple matter of Iris Wildthyme’s existence.

The Doctor would’ve been laughing had the situation not been so serious.

“What do you mean I don’t have clearance?” Iris demanded incredulously, perching her hands on her hips as she glared up at the security officer. “I have one of the highest levels of access, as assigned by the Commander himself.”

“I’m sorry ma’am, but your bio-print doesn’t match the records on file for Iris Wildthyme. I can’t let you have access to the launch bays.”

“Well _check again_ ,” she growled.

The security guard sighed and turned back to his station computer, growling something in low, course Venustan. Iris snorted, and turned back around with a frustrated look. The Doctor looked insufferably smug, despite his troubled gaze. She sniffed.

The plan had been simple. Iris still had her clearance for the shuttles from before the accident, when she had been given free reign between Astrum and Advica for her work. Therefore, she had taken charge, and it had been agreed that she clear the way before the two men followed.

It had bypassed her notice that since she had been declared missing in action, presumed dead, her security clearance had been revoked.

“Got a plan B, Doctor?” Iris grumbled at him, stepping over to his side and folding her arms over her chest. “I don’t think he’s going to listen.”

He patted her arm lightly and grinned. “It was a valiant effort, Iris.”

She grunted. He chuckled, and stepped up to the security office, knocking on the window. The guard looked up resignedly and glared. “You again; what do you want?”

“Just to apologise,” the Doctor said with a friendly grin, looping an arm exaggeratedly around Iris’s shoulders. She stared at him as if he were mad. “My dear cousin is a bit sun-touched these days, rough time of it at the coastline I’m afraid. Keeps thinking she’s other people. I have clearance here, if I could just...” he gestured to his pockets, and the guard frowned, laying a hand on his weapon as he stepped out from the small office.

“No funny business,” the man warned, as the Doctor removed his psychic paper from the spacious coat pocket, and held it out to the guard, before moving himself to look at the paper over the man’s shoulder.

“Doctor Smith and guests to board shuttle Tydereon for a direct route to the Death Star?” the guard read from the paper.

“Really nothing to be concerned over, just a routine inspection of the helmic regulators,” The Doctor continued, snatching the paper back and stuffing it in his pocket as he draped an arm companionably over the guard’s shoulder. “I am really terribly sorry for all this mess, my good chap. And I’m also sorry for the headache.”

“I don’t have a headache –” the guard began, but it was as far as he got. His facial expression stiffened, and for a moment he looked lost in thought, before his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed bonelessly on the spot. Iris and Mikael hurriedly caught him before he could strike the pavement.

“What did you do? Is he dead?” Mikael asked with a note of shock. The Doctor frowned, shaking his hand out as he stepped over the body and waved the sonic screwdriver over the security code pad.

“Venusian Akido. Bit out of practice, but he should be out cold for an hour or so. Plenty of time.”

Mikael considered the man propped up against the wall, and sighed. “Wonderful. I can add assaulting an officer to the list of charges. This day just keeps getting better.”

Iris laughed softly and hugged his shoulders, pulling him forward through the gate. “Welcome to my world, Mikky sweet.”

The Doctor bolted for the smallest craft available, and bypassed the security measures on the systems. When Iris and Mikael caught up to him, he was already in the pilot’s seat, scrambling the computer systems with his sonic screwdriver to circumvent the ignition codes. Iris helped Mikael strap in before bouncing over the center controls into the co-pilot seat, eying the Doctor expectantly.

“Handy little device,” she remarked, watching him work. He beamed.

“Latest model – the last one I had got a bit melted when I stuck it in an X-ray machine.” He paused, giving her a sideways glance. “You aren’t going to steal it, are you?”

She looked affronted. “Nice to see you have such faith in me, Doctor.”

He shrugged. “The last time I was partnered with a fellow Time Lord, Romana stole my sonic screwdriver. I just build the nicest toys.” He grinned cheekily at her. “I could go into business.”

She smirked back, unimpressed, and jabbed her thumb away from him. “Get out.”

His expression faltered into a puzzled glare. “Say what?”

“You heard me; out of the chair. I’m driving.”

“Iris this is hardly the time to argue over who gets to fly the ship,” he remarked with a frown.

“Do you know how to pilot a 57-Beta class Venustan Star-Jumper?”

He opened his mouth, hesitated, and snapped it shut again. Then he vacated the seat and she grinned, climbing into the empty chair and strapping in.

“Hold on to your hats kids, gonna be a wild ride,” she crowed, and fired up the engines. The low hum became a growl as the pulse generators roared to life, and the craft rose into the air. With a whoop, Iris yanked back on the controls, and the shuttle launched into the clouds, trembling with the turbulence of the atmosphere as they climbed higher and higher into Venustan sky. With a bump and a second groan, the boost-flare activated, and the Doctor felt the unfamiliar shift in gravity as the weightlessness of space took affect, pulling him against his seat straps. The automatic gravity systems kicked in after a moment, and he felt his stomach settle back into place, and breathed out a sigh he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. He felt an exhilarated grin creep across his features.

Casting a glance at Iris, he was surprised to see the look mirrored on her own features, though it faded more quickly as she took a look back at Mikael. “Doing okay back there, Mik?”

“If you d-don’t mind, Miss Wildthyme,” the man said weakly, his voice shaking as badly as his hands. “I-I-I think I’ll j-just p-p-pass out for a while.”

“Aw, don’t do that honey, you’ll miss out on the view,” Iris said encouragingly, turning back to the controls and programming the auto-navigation. The Doctor caught her eye and angled his head the slightest towards Mikael questioningly. She took a quick glance, then mouthed “shuttle-shy” at him, a sad smile gracing her lips.

The Doctor’s eyebrows elevated slightly and he nodded in understanding. Poor kid was already jumpy enough without being subjected to Iris’s flight skills.

“What’s the average travel-speed between here and Astrum?” he asked, focusing his mind back on the mission.

“About three hours, maximum speed. Had you waited I probably could’ve hotwired an Alpha class, but the Betas aren’t known for their speed.”

The Doctor winced. Three hours was cutting it too close for comfort. Iris seemed to sense his unease, and cast him a sideways glance, before reaching out and laying a hand on his shoulder with a reassuring grin. “Don’t worry Doc. We’ll make it. Relax a bit, enjoy the scenery.”

The Doctor smiled back weakly, and turned his gaze out to the stars. Such bright pinpoints of light, shining from billions and billions of miles across the whole of the dark expanse of void, it was enough to make even a Time Lord feel small.

“Get some sleep, Doctor,” Iris said, and he opened an eye to find her staring intently at him. With her new blue eyes, it reminded him of his previous self, or his eighth incarnation, and their nonexistent ability to stare right through a person’s soul. He sat up straighter, frowning stubbornly, but she merely propped her chin up on her knee, and continued to gaze at him. “You’re exhausted. Get some sleep. A catnap, if you like. I’ll wake you when we’re on descent.”

He tried to make some snippy, pointed remark about Time Lord Biology, but…then…Iris knew all about that. That was one of the annoying things about travelling with someone of your own kind, he though groggily. You couldn’t play the superior alien without them dumping scorn on you.

Anyway, a quick nap wouldn’t hurt. He was…feeling a bit…tired. Busy day and…and…

Iris looked over at the Doctor, fast asleep with his tie pulled over his eyes like a blindfold, and smiled.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

As much as the Doctor wanted to deny it, when Iris shook him gently awake he did feel a measure better then he had been feeling ever since the Eye of Orion. The man yawned and stretched stiff muscles, glancing out the porthole.   
“We’re there?”

“A whole hour ahead of schedule; no applause, please,” Iris replied, deactivating the autopilot and taking the controls. The shuttle began to tremble, no longer stabilized by the computers. “Wake Mikael, would you? The planet is reading surface instability – it might get a bit bumpy on entry.”

The Doctor grunted in acknowledgement and rose, stepping back into the passenger section and prodding the young scientist awake. Mikael roused with a muzzled whine and blinked sleepily for a moment before he remembered where he was, and snapped alert.

“We’re shaking – is everything alright?” the boy asked nervously. The Doctor patted his arm reassuringly.  
“Yes of course. We’re on descent, just thought I should wake you. It’s going to get a bit rough, but nothing to worry about.” He smiled brightly, which didn’t seem to sooth the man’s anxiety.

The shuttle lurched, knocking the Doctor off balance, and his smile fell as he quickly returned to the cockpit. “We hit something?”

“Atmospheric gas pocket,” Iris said, gritting her teeth in concentration as she held the craft on course. “Leaking up from underground; we’re loosing our buoyancy on the currents – they’re all over the place.”

“Can you maneuver around them?” The Doctor asked worriedly, grabbing onto the back of her chair as another bubble knocked their left wing. She shook her head.  
“Not all of them. I’m doing my best to avoid the big patches, but these systems aren’t exactly state of the art.”

“As long as you get us on the ground in one piece, I’m not complaining.” As another gas pocket enveloped the craft, the Doctor collapsed back into his seat and strapped up, pulling up the navigational screens. “Angle of descent is too sharp, Iris, pull the nose up.”

“I know, I know! We hit dead space! The instruments aren’t responding right.”

“We’re receiving the homing beacon from the complex, use it to guide in.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Iris snapped tetchily, her tone implying “bloody backseat driver.”

The shuttle engines howled in protest as the craft arched low over the trees before climbing back into the air, settling out on a stable flight path as the nose slowly turned towards the landing bays of the outpost.

“Easy, whoa, Iris,” the Doctor warned, a note of panic creeping into his voice as the shuttle came in sharp. “Iris, watch out for the – IRIS, the bay doors!”

“Shut up, I know!”

A banshee wail screamed up their spines as the wing of the shuttle scraped against the bulkhead doors, even as the craft slowed and touched its wheels to the floor. The craft ground to a halt, and hissed a sigh of pressure-change.

Shakily, the Doctor released his grip on the chair, and hurriedly un-strapped himself. “Iris, please don’t take this the wrong way, but your flight skills are dangerously close to the defective robots piloting the cruise shuttles on Star Tours,” he told her.

She gawped at him as he unlatched the airlock. “Since when are you an expert for Disneyland rides?”

He hesitated, for a moment looking sheepish. “Tegan coerced me.”

A light flared in her eyes with an impish grin following in its wake. “Tegan, eh? Wasn’t she the one who had your fifth self wrapped around her finger?”

“Enough, Iris, we’d better get moving,” he said tersely, and kicked out the ladder, climbing down into the deserted launch bay and glancing around warily.

She chortled and made a move to follow him down, but Mikael grabbed her arm, his eyes wide. “Miss Iris,” he whispered. “This world called Disney’s Land...do they really empower defective androids to fly their spacecraft?” The very idea seemed horrifying.

She stared at him for a moment before laughing softly. “I’ll explain it to you later, Mikael, I promise.” She paused, and laid a hand on his arm, meeting his eyes with an intense gaze. “Mikael, stay here. Please. If anything goes wrong, I want you to get out of here. I wouldn’t forgive myself if you…got into trouble.”

“If I died, you mean,” he said softly. Iris’s eyes clouded.  
“You’re smarter then they give you credit for, Mikael. Stay safe.” She tugged him down, pressing a kiss to his forehead, and smiled cheekily, before sliding down the ladder in a very James-Bond manner.  
The young scientist blushed, hesitating, before he returned to the interior of the ship, shutting the airlock behind him.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

The hallways were cold, barren of life as the low hum of the air processors buzzed over their heads. All the personnel had been evacuated after the explosion, and it gave the entire place a sense of trespass. Even the Doctor’s soft steps, cushioned by his trainers, echoed in the empty corridors. Iris pulled her jacket tighter and swallowed. “This place is giving me the creeps. I feel like something’s just gonna jump out at us from around a corner and eat our faces off. I don’t want my face eaten, Doctor – I rather like it. It’s starting to grow on me.”

“Very Jurassic Park,” the Doctor muttered in agreement, cracking a small smile at her humoured petulance. “Only it wasn’t dinosaurs that ate the crew.”

Iris blanched slightly and hurried her pace. “The main power stations are just down to the right. I lashed the stabiliser right up to the main grid, so it should be easy to find.”

He turned down the proper corridor, pushed open the doors to the power station, and stopped cold. Iris bumped into his back and opened her mouth to reprimand him, but her own words were frozen in her throat.

The lab was a battleground.

“Iris, just how big was this overload?” The Doctor asked breathlessly, stepping into the room. The whole of the power system computers were a shattered, tangled mess, scorched black by fire. The scent of electrical ozone was heavy on the air, mixed with the exotic perfume of the planet outside, and the noxious toxins of natural gasses that had leaked through a crack in the windows.

“Bigger then I thought,” she murmured in shock, moving forward and pushing aside a section of ceiling that had fallen down. “I’d imagine,” she continued louder, “that not all of this was done by the power surge. There have been planet-quakes increasing in frequency since the thing short-circuited…or, so I said on my logs,” she amended as he shot her a warning glance. “Or whatever. Time semantics always gave me a headache.” Her expression grew studious as she sought the room, not noticing the patch of dark dampness until her soles skidded on the slippery surface and she reeled off-balance. The Doctor’s hands appeared at her sides immediately to steady her back on her feet, and Iris was able to look down and see what she had slid in.

It was something coppery-red; she could see that, even in the bad light. Red and sticky and –

Her face paled into an ill shade of white. “ _Oh my god_.”

“Guess they didn’t do too well of a cleaning job once they got you out of here,” the Doctor remarked dourly, steering her away from the corner and the gruesome mess. “C’mon Iris, stay with me, focus. Where did you hook the stabiliser?”

Iris swallowed, fighting back her nausea and glancing around the room again.

“O-over here,” she said timidly, gesturing as she moved towards the computer banks. The wires for the device snaked under a pile of rubble, and she frowned.   
“Gimme a hand with this thing, Doc.”  
The Doctor stepped over the twisted remains of a desk chair and helped heave a segment of ceiling tile that had fallen across the computer banks. Beneath it, the stabilizer sat, still humming away as if nothing was wrong. Iris beamed satisfactorily, though she still looked shaken. “There, y’see? Not a scratch on it. I build ‘em right when I have to.”

He didn’t reply, moving forward and crouching among the debris, studying the device cautiously.

“This is bad,” he observed grimly. “The circuits are fused. It works, but it’ll be like defusing a nuke, made all the more worse that there aren’t any accessible wires to cut.”

“You’ve built more complex things, I’m sure,” Iris remarked casually, upturning a chair that was relatively unscathed and making herself comfortable, watching over his shoulder.  
The Doctor didn’t reply for a few minutes. When he did, it was a quiet and enigmatically chilled “yes.”

Iris stilled.

“Doctor…” she began, before pausing, considering her words. “…What happened? On Arcadia…Gallifrey…the War…?”

When he didn’t reply, she continued, the words tumbling past her lips before she could stop them.  
“And I won’t take ‘ _preserving the web of time_ ’ as an excuse for silence this time, because I’m dead anyway. You know it, I know it. Just a temporal anomaly, me; there’s nothing I can do to change any of it, so telling me wouldn’t have an effect. And I’m sorry if I’m pouring salt on open wounds, but my curiosity is very feline-esk and if you don’t start talking, I may have to start singing 15th century show tunes. And you know I haven’t had a chance to test my singing prowess in this body. I might sound _hideous_.”

“That’s a technicality, Iris,” the Doctor argued. “You’re dodging the issue.”

“So are you,” she pointed out.

The Doctor wouldn’t meet her eyes. “It was a war, Iris. Not much to tell.”

But Iris shook her head and glared at his back. “Doctor, for once in your lives, you’re going to give me some straight answers. What in the name of the Sisterhood happened?”

“The Time War happened,” the Doctor informed her curtly. “War’s always messy, and Time Wars aren’t any exception. When you’re in the middle of one, it’s hard enough to keep in mind who’s winning, let alone what’s actually happening – or being made to un-happen.”  
A short, hard bark of laughter that didn’t sound like the Doctor at all escaped his throat. “Not even the historians know about it. How’s that? The war to end all wars, and nobody even knew. It’s all myths and legends – should’ve seen Jack’s face when he learned it was all true.”

Iris got up, sat down beside him, and made him look her in the eye.  
“Doctor, what’s wrong with you? You’re… _different_.”

The Doctor looked away from those piercing blue eyes. “New, new Doctor, that’s me. Come on, Iris,” his control returned, he looked at her with innocent inquiry, “you know I change every time.”

Iris shook her head again. “Not like this, Doctor. Even your seventh self wasn’t like this.”

“Like what?” the Doctor couldn’t help it – the hesitant words spilled out before he could stop them.

“Cold,” said Iris slowly. “When you don’t think anyone’s looking, when someone says the wrong thing…like, underneath the joking and the smiles, you feel cold. Like you’ve built a wall around your hearts to stop anything ever hurting them again.”

The Doctor jerked back as though she’d bitten him.

“Don’t,” he said, in a carefully neutral voice in the tone that didn’t seem to trust itself if it didn’t stay perfectly bland. “Don’t, Iris. Please.”

“I’m your friend, chuck,” said Iris quietly. “Tell me. What happened at Arcadia?”

The Doctor sighed – and it came out low and strangled, like something that might have been a sob and a laugh, both choked down by an unwilling throat.

“All right,” he said, and he sounded beaten. “All right.”

He got up, and sat down on Iris’s chair – she took the one opposite him.

“Arcadia fell,” he said bluntly, without preamble. “It was the last stronghold for the Time Lords, the only thing keeping the Daleks from Gallifrey.” He looked at her with childish eyes. “And I was scared. Oh, Iris, I was so frightened. It was alright when the Daleks invaded Earth, or Mars, or anywhere else –but then they started trying to attack my _home_ . . .” he looked away, then continued.

“Romana told me I was her last hope. I wanted to tell her to give it to someone else, anyone else. But,” he said simply, “there was no one else. So I was the Doctor for her, one last time. I laughed, told her to give me something hard next time, took my TARDIS out to Arcadia, and watched it for her. More to the point, I watched it fall.”

He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was calmer. “We never had a hope, really. The Daleks punched through the defence shields like they weren’t even there. They blasted every defence module we had out of the sky, and then they just –just moved through the streets, killing everyone.”

“Oh, Doctor…”

The Doctor kept going, as though he hadn’t even heard her. “They had new weapons, you know. More efficient energy saving guns for better coverage, so they didn’t die immediately, just slowly felt their insides burn inside them as their brains fried. And there was so much blood, in the streets and on the ground and smeared on the walls and the air was thick with the smell of it –”

“It’s all right, chuck,” Iris moved towards him, operating on some basic instinct to stop the hurt he was feeling, stop the flow of words that cut into him like a knife.

But the Doctor waved her back, his tale incomplete. “I wanted to die,” he said in a low voice, “I didn’t want to live, not when all those people who trusted the great Time Lord the Doctor to save them. I felt like I could hear them calling my name, begging for me to save them.”

Iris flinched. “There was nothing you could do.”

“There should have been!” the Doctor yelled. He pulled himself from his chair and ran his hands through his hair. “I’m the Doctor! I save people, don’t I? That’s my job. And I failed, Iris. I let those people die, and I –” he stopped.

“You what?” asked Iris, raising an eyebrow. “Survived?”

There was a very long silence. The Doctor sank slowly back down into his chair. When at last he looked up, he sounded tired.

“Gallifrey burned, like I said. I opened the Eye of Harmony, and they -they all died. Not just the Daleks, Iris. Everyone died. I was the only one left. I… _am_ the only one left.”

“Oh my god…” Iris whispered.

The Doctor nodded grimly. “I thought I would go mad. There were these great empty holes in my mind where the Matrix used to be. And there wasn’t…anything. Just my own thoughts, echoing back to me like I was shut in a prison with no doors. I think I did go mad, for a while. And then…I met Rose.” A wistful look crossed his features, masking the pain for a moment.

“She wasn’t clever or special or anything. She was just an ordinary shop-girl from London in the wrong place at the wrong time. I told her to run, and she did. She travelled with me – stuck through my ninth regeneration, believe it or not. I was always showing off for her, the superior Time Lord with his highly advanced time machine, drinking in all her wonder at the brilliance of it all. It was like looking at it all through new eyes.”

He looked up. “She gave me back my reason to live.”

Iris wished she could ask where this Rose had gone –but she let it lie. She had a feeling the Doctor wasn’t quite ready to talk about her.

“Maybe you were right,” he said quietly. “I am all those things you called me. Just a disgraced Prydonian renegade, a shame to ye great old house of Lungbarrow,” a small, painful chuckle, “who thinks the cosmos revolves around him.”

 “Doctor, I was still mucked up from my regeneration, I wasn’t thinking!” Iris protested. “You’re none of those things, and you know it. It was just my inferiority complex coming out.”

The Doctor’s eyebrow attempted to ascend above his hairline. “You, Ms. Wildthyme, an inferiority complex? I don’t believe it!”

Iris laughed, relieved to have left the subject of Gallifrey behind. “Oh, yes indeed! Those Oakdowns at the Academy never let me forget it!”

The Doctor snorted. “Oakdowns, what do they know? Bunch of pretentious upstarts; they weren’t even a Founding House, but they acted like it. The Wildthymes are just as good as them!”

Iris’s eyes twinkled. “Try telling that to them.”

The Doctor laughed unexpectedly. “I did. That was how I met the Master. All swaggering about like Rassilon had authorised his bio-print –”

“Ah, but you were a Lungbarrow,” Iris reminded him. “If I tried to tell him, he would have just looked down that oh-so-patriarchal nose of his, and sniffed at me.”

“That patriarchal nose was a bit swollen after we were through,” the Doctor remarked, getting to his feet. “He had to have a med-patch after we were finished.”

Iris followed him to the controls. “So did you,” she pointed out. “Oh yes, I heard the stories, even if I wasn’t in the Prydonian Academy. Everyone heard about the two would-be Time Lords playing fist-cuffs in the hallway.”

The Doctor looked at her, his voice indignant. “It was not fist-cuffs! It was a disagreement between gentlemen!”

“One that required treatment for a black eye?” asked Iris slyly. “Face it, Doctor. You always were a bit of a bruiser.”

“Yes, well…at the moment,” said the Doctor absently, “I’m more of a handy-man.”

She smiled, and sank back into her chair, watching him work on the device. Her eyes flickered nervously towards the ceiling as the room trembled with a minor quake. “So, what’s the verdict, handy-man?”

He glanced up from the device for a moment, before looking back down at the stabiliser. It was about the size of a 21st century DVD player, but with six sides. Spaced in an equilateral triangle were three slots, in which a trio of crystals were fitted, and the centre of the device had a fourth slot in which a focusing rod was attached. It was crudely built, but served its purpose. And it might’ve worked, given the right time to make adjustments.

“Well, it’s certainly an intriguing design you used. Probably could’ve gone a lot simpler, but I’m grateful it’s not more complex,” he remarked. “What made you think of using a tri-crystal focusing alignment? It’s outdated, makes this thing a relic compared to what you could’ve used.”

“I dunno; it seemed like the best idea at the time. Limited supplies, short on time, you know the drill,” Iris replied. “Anyways, a six-pointed star seemed like good luck for the Sidus-Pardus project.”

“The what?” he glanced up with a frown. “Sidus-Pardus, that’s –”

“Venustan-Latin for Star Leopard, I know. Mikael thought of it. Their leopard goddess is supposed to bring good luck to those who strive to succeed.”

“That’s odd, actually, very odd.” He frowned. The device hummed under his fingers, just the barest tingles in the back of his mind. It was setting off all sorts of warning alarms, though. The Katseye had felt exactly the same when Mel had laid it in his palm.  
He turned back to the device, studying it closer, and was surprised to find a slot in the bottom-most corner. “It looks key-activated, or at least there’s a slot for one. I don’t suppose you happen to have the key handy?”

Iris looked stricken. “Oh bugger, I knew there was something I’d forgotten about!” Hurriedly she rummaged her pockets, but came up empty, and shot him an apologetic look. “Sorry Doctor. It must’ve been lost in the explosion.”

He sighed, looking suddenly gloomy. “I had a feeling you’d say that. Doubt it would’ve worked anyways, but it didn’t hurt to ask.”

She tilted her head curiously. “Why not? I mean, why wouldn’t the key have worked?”

“Because,” he said, heaving a sigh and turning back to the device, “Niveus Astrum is, or was, containing a piece of the Key.”

Something about the way he pronounced ‘Key’ caught Iris’s attention.

“What sort of Key?” she asked. Then a thought smacked her in the face with all the force of a wet trout. “The Key to TIME?”

The Doctor refrained from rolling his eyes. “No, Iris, the key to the Tescos on Fourth and Main.”

She scowled at him. “Well there’s no need to be snippy about it – wait, hold on. You said ‘ _was_.’ It isn’t anymore?”

He reached down to the floor and lifted the stabiliser, setting it on the table. “Because your little device absorbed the portion that was.”

She rose from her seat, staring at the stabiliser in astonishment. “By the Other.”

He nodded sagely and rested his arm across her shoulders. “Turns out it was the catalyst, Iris. The matter inside the core of the planet, kept in perfect balance by the existence of the matter that happened to be the right piece. In a few months time, that matter would’ve been circulated up, probably in some volcanic eruption and the balance would’ve been upset. History would’ve taken its course. But you hooked up your contraption and sucked the particles right out.”

“Like a milkshake through a straw,” she alluded weakly, leaning against him. “God, that means this is all my fault…”

He shook his head, giving her a light squeeze. “Not your fault, Iris. The party has started early, that’s all. Trouble is,” he continued, releasing her and sliding his glasses onto his nose, poking into the interior of the device. “I’m not sure if I can just shut it off. It might cause a backlash of energy that would vaporise us on the spot.”

“We’ll be vaporised anyways, if we’re still here when the planet goes critical,” she pointed out numbly. “Which will probably be in a few hours time. We still have to make it back to Astrum, remember?”

“I remember,” he said, staring at the device intently.

Then, in a mercurial snap of mood, he grinned devilishly, fished a coin out of his pocket, and held it up for her. “Heads or tails?”

She stared at him as if he were mad. He probably was. But it brought a faint glimmer of humour to her eyes. “No dice, Doctor. That’s a double-headed Alterean dollar.”

“My lucky dollar, I’ll have you know,” he corrected, tossing it in the air and pocketing it as he dashed to the computer banks, grasping the power relays that connected the stabiliser to the systems. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Cross your fingers, Iris. And if we do get vaporised instantly…” he paused, as if searching for the right last words. “Oh hell. It was absolutely brilliant to see you again.”

She smiled sadly. “You too, Doctor.”

He grinned brilliantly at her, took a last, deep breath, and pulled the connection, flinching instinctively away from the machines.

Nothing happened.

The low thrum of power that had been feeding the device slowly died away and the stabiliser’s lights flicked off.

Slowly he cracked open an eye, then the other, and straightened, exhaling a sigh of relief.

“Well, that was…anti-climactic. Not that I’m complaining, mind.”

Iris didn’t seem to have any complaints, either.

“HAHA!” she crowed gleefully, and hugged him around his neck, grabbing his head and planting a solid kiss on his lips. “It worked!”

He spluttered in shock. “Iris!”

Quickly she let go of him and had the decency to look embarrassed, despite the idiotic grin. “Sorry. But we’re not dead!”

The room began to quiver and lurch as a massive seismic tremor wracked the planet’s surface. Iris reeled off-balance as the floor rolled beneath her feet and the Doctor caught her, grabbing her hand.

“Spoken far, far too soon, I’m afraid! We’ve cut off the link between the planet and the Key, without that the countdown’s really begun!” He shouted over the rumble, grabbing the stabiliser and tucking it under his arm. “Back to the shuttle!”

“No argument from me!” Iris yelled back, and together they fled for their lives.


	12. Volcano Day

The corridors were short and few, but they seemed to stretch on forever as the two Time Lords raced through the complex. It didn’t help matters that the whole area was trembling beneath their feet, the growl of the quake resembling the snarl of an otherworldly beast.

“Which way?” Iris gasped, out of breath, in the rare moment when the Doctor stopped moving. “All the corridors look the same.”

“No they don’t, Iris, it’s your mind playing tricks,” he cautioned, and before she could object he grabbed her hand and pulled her down to the left of the hall. “This way, come on!”

“Doctor, no!” She grabbed his arm and yanked him back as the hallway lurched and buckled, the ceiling collapsing in a shower of dust and mortar. They stared at the blockade for a moment, breathing hard. The Doctor cracked a grin.

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” she replied breathlessly. “I remembered – that way is nothing but quarters anyways. But we’ll have to take a detour to get to the bay.”

He waved a hand. “By all means lead the way.”

She shot him a brief glare. “Stop rhyming!”

“Right, sorry.”

She responded by tugging his arm down the other direction, and all conversation ceased as their feet pounded on the linoleum. Right, left, right again. _‘Since when had the outpost turned into a maze?’_ The Doctor wondered, before his eyes fell on the mauve flash of a hall sign. He skidded to a halt and took a second look.

“Shuttle Bays to the right!” He announced triumphantly, and dodged down the path. The scent of engine fuel and launch exhaust assailed his nostrils and he breathed it in like a sweet perfume. They had made it.

Mikael was waiting at the craft, panic stricken to his expression as he gestured wildly for them to hurry. The Doctor pushed Iris ahead of him, handed up the stabiliser, and ascended the ladder into their craft rapidly. His breathing was hard, gulping each deep lungful of the generated cabin air as he quickly fired up the engines.

“But Doctor, you don’t know how to fly –”

“We don’t have time to argue!”

He throttled the engines to full and blasted out of the bay doors with roar of rocket flame, and took a straight ascent up into the clouds, the inertial dampeners doing little to relieve all of the g-force pressing them into their seats, as the research outpost collapsed behind them, swallowed by the quake.

The Doctor leaned back in his seat with a heavy sigh of relief and barked a laugh. It was one of those, ‘I can’t believe we didn’t die just then’ laughs, tainted with disbelief and a smidge of hysteria. “That was way too close. Iris, you alright? Mikael?”

“We’re fine,” Iris replied from the back, panting. One hand was clutched tight in Mikael’s, while the other held the stabiliser securely to her chest. “Just a bit shaken; get us the blazes out of here.”

“Your wish is my command.” He set the controls and the shuttle gave a lurch as the engines propelled them away from the dying planet, and towards Venustas, which hung like a glittering Christmas ornament in the black of space.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Above the city’s gleaming towers, a low, sonic growl rolled across the atmosphere, like the thunder of a distant storm. It drew the attentions of several on the ground, and eyes turned to the sky in response with curiosity and worry in their expressions, before the evacuation activities resumed. Martha frowned slightly as she turned her own eyes to the sky, and stilled her movements, watching in awe. “Jack...”

The tone of her voice drew the man’s attention, and he paused as well, giving her a curious frown before following her gaze. The sky above their heads had begun to change colours, darkening from the pristine blues and purples of the nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere into rich, burnt amber. It rippled across the horizon and swept over their heads like a magma flow, completely engulfing the sunlight and shining down on the world with a sunset glow.

“What the hell?” Jack muttered.

“Wow...that’s beautiful...” Martha murmured. “Like Gallifrey.”

The name snapped Jack’s attention back to her and he crumpled his brow. “The Doctor’s planet?”

Martha looked sheepish for a moment, and shook her head, grabbing a crate and loading it into the shuttle cargo hold. “It’s nothing; just a random thought.” She glanced up. “The Doctor told me once, about it. He said...the sky on his home planet was a burnt orange, with red grass, and silver trees, and a great citadel in glass. For a second, it came to mind when I saw the sky.”

Jack frowned, and grabbed another crate, loading it beside hers. “Somewhat ironic, then.”  
When she gave him a curious look, he met it with a grim humour. “Like Gallifrey, Venustas is gonna burn.”

Her gaze darkened and she scowled. “That’s not funny, Jack.”

He turned his eyes away and his face became an unreadable mask. “I never said it was.”

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

“Radiation levels have begun to climb,” Iris announced, studying the readouts from the co-pilot’s chair. “I’m reading sixty percent above safe levels on the exterior hull. Good thing these shuttles are shielded.”

“It’s begun,” the Doctor surmised dourly. “The quakes were just cosmetic damage. Astrum’s core is turning nuclear.”

“The radiation won’t reach Venustas before we do, will it?” Iris asked worriedly. He shook his head.

“Not if I push the engines a little further. We’ll be hitting atmo soon, start the re-entry prep.”

Iris began to program the navigational system for re-entry, her usually cheerful face serious. It was strange. She’d never been the poster child for sticking in one place, one time, for long periods, but the weeks she had been forced to spend on Venustas had affected her. The old Iris might’ve never given a rat’s ass if the planet burned, as long as she could save her own skin. The new Iris was feeling an almost frightening possession to the little green rock, and it was unsettling in whole new ways to hear the play-by-play of its destruction.

She was referring to herself in third person again. It had to be stress. “God I need a drink. Doctor, the entry sequence is ready.”

He nodded and the view through the windows became a flickering fire-haze as the shuttle hit the planet’s atmosphere, breaking through the upper layers.

The shuttle lurched briefly as it passed through the boundary of burnt amber sky, and the engines roared as they circled in to land.

Mikael was naturally the first to the door, and released the airlock clamps, the hiss of warm air a stark contrast to the conditioned air inside. He breathed in a startled gasp, staring upwards at the sky.

“ _Per dea quod totus abyssus incendia_ , oh, this is _not_ good,” he said nervously, looking up at the unnatural colouration of clouds and air.

“This is a whole bushel-full of bad déjà vu,” Iris muttered, her blue eyes darkening as she followed the scientist’s gaze upwards, eying the scorched sky with restlessness. “I feel like we’re back on -” she stopped herself, glancing at the Doctor, and swallowed. “Well, it’s familiar.”

For a moment, the Doctor just looked at her, his expression as though he had just made a startling private revelation.

“Looks a bit like Gallifrey, doesn’t it?” he asked with light deliberation. “See, if you squint, that tower in the distance there could have been the Panopticon.”

“I guess it could,” Iris muttered. Then she blinked, finding something rather familiar. “And that white patch way over there looks a bit like that field of daisies you went nuts over just before you left.”

The Doctor laughed. “I took the daisiest daisies of them all with me, you know,” he commented. “Remember the look you gave me when I came running up with a fistful of flowers in my hand and a huge grin on my face?”

Iris snorted. “How couldn’t I? I thought you’d gone crackers on us.”

The Doctor looked thoughtful, as though seriously considering the possibility. “No, I think it was just the mountain air,” he said with a grin. Then he sobered. “I’m sorry, Iris.”

She blinked. “What for, chuck?”

The Doctor waved a hand at the landscape around them. “For reminding me that I’m not the only person who’s lost their planet. It feels good, actually,” he added, “to talk…well, to talk…”

Iris finished the sentence. “To talk to someone who knows what Gallifrey used to be?” she asked.

The Doctor shook his head. “To talk to _you_ ,” he said awkwardly. “I’d forgotten how much I missed you, Iris.”

And Iris turned away to look up at the sky again, so the Doctor couldn’t see the idiotic smile that seemed to be about to split her entire face in two.

“The radiation shields are turning the sky that colour,” Mikael explained, pulling the conversation back on to its original tracks. He was looking a few shades better now that his feet were on solid ground, though not exactly entirely pleased by what he’d just said. “About a hundred years or so, we discovered that our sun cycles through a periodic radiation pulse that sends a burst of energy out across Orion. Harmless for the most part, no ecological damage, but it was concerning enough for our scientists to research and develop shield technology to protect our cities against such things.”

“How powerful are they?” the Doctor asked, stowing the stabiliser in one of his spacious coat pockets.

“Not nearly powerful enough to combat the levels we saw on the shuttle’s readouts. I give it maybe half an hour before it falls.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” the Doctor said bleakly, glancing around. “These folks have the right idea. Someone must’ve started an evacuation plan. Oi! Over here!” He ran towards the crowds, waving his arms wildly to draw attention. “Spare shuttle! That’s it; we’re getting as many folk off this planet as possible! No need to crowd, plenty of room!”

Another sonic rumble shook the buildings and the ground beneath their feet, and the mood of the city became that little bit more panicked. A klaxon began to wail a warning through the city’s streets.

Iris shrank away from the activity, suddenly feeling claustrophobic. Something was escaping her, something she was forgetting. She glanced around the crowded shuttle bays, and her breath caught in her throat.

A familiar flash of crimson metal caught her eyes, shocking her back to her senses. Overtaken by a blind worry, she began running across the station, heading for the familiar ground. Venustas was going to fall; there was nothing she could do to stop it, and her bus, her home, was trapped in the centre of the chaos.

Mikael caught a glimpse of leopard-spotted coat fleeing through the crowds, and grabbed the Doctor’s sleeve to catch his attention before he bolted after her. “Iris! Wait!”

The Doctor looked up from where he was helping a woman and her child board the craft, and groaned – where did they think they were going? The radiation shields weren’t going to hold for much longer, and –

Oh.  
Oh no.

He relinquished command to a Venustan and swore in Old Low Gallifreyan, leapt down from the ladder, and chased after the infuriating woman and her companion.

"Iris, what do you think you're doing?!" he demanded, yanking the driver's side door open and grabbing her arm. Iris tore it from his grasp and glared as she resumed punching buttons on the console with a feverish compulsion.

"Inputting temporal coordinates. I can't leave her here Doctor, she wouldn't survive. Just a quick program to send her forward and I'll be along in a second."

The Doctor grabbed her arm again and pulled her out of the bus, slamming the door behind her and dragging her away. "We don't have time, Iris! We have to go!"

"Let me go! I have to finish!" she shrieked, more panic then anger sending her voice impossibly high in desperation as she punched his arm. "You can't just leave her in the middle of this! It's murder!"

To her shock, she suddenly found the Doctor –her pacifist Doctor –had grabbed her by both arms, pinioned her, and was shaking her in blind fury.  
All she could see through the jolting was his eyes, blazing with anger and desperation and something else…

“Iris! Listen to me! In ten minutes the radiation shields protecting this city will fail. This planet is going to burn, Iris!”

“I’ve had my bus for millennia, Doctor!” she protested, still angry herself. “I won’t leave her behind!”

“And I will not have your blood on my hands!" The words seemed to have been ripped from the Doctor’s throat, anguished and furious at the same time. “I can’t lose you –not again! Now come _on_!”

This time, when he grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the double-decker bus that was her TARDIS, she didn't resist.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

Once the klaxons had begun to scream their warning, Martha and Jack had been left behind in the scramble. The shuttles were filling up fast, some taking on more then they should’ve. Like the Titanic, there were too few pods for too many people. The roar of engines of the craft that were full filled the air with ear-splitting noise, and in the dusky sky, the bright star that was Niveus Astrum was glowing brighter, growing larger. Jack had grabbed Martha’s hand and hauled her out of the frenzy, and together they ran for the safety of the TARDIS.

When they arrived, breathless and flushed, the Doctor was already at the door, inserting his key into the lock. His head snapped up and his gaze darkened ten levels into a moment of anger.

“What are you doing out here?!” He demanded, but gave them no chance to reply, forcing open the doors to the Police Box and ushering Iris inside ahead of him, then Mikael, then Martha, then Jack.

“Sorry Doctor, we had to help! History said they got survivors off-world,” Martha panted, leaning on the Captain’s chair. “It was what brought the Reapers when the future changed.”

“Is Ioan alright? Was he with them?” Iris asked worriedly, and Martha nodded.  
“He was on one of the last shuttles, we saw him before the klaxons started.”

“Reapers or not it was a stupid, idiotic thing to do, going out there! But I can be mad at you two later. Right now we’ve got to get out of here,” the Doctor said in a flurry, waving his hands. He still radiated anger, but it was overlapped with adrenaline as he plugged cables into the power unit of an odd hexagon-shaped device. “Found another piece of the Key to Time, go figure. Heart of all the trouble, and Iris’s device just sucked it right out of Astrum’s core – we’re gonna use it to punch through that bubble.”

“Another?!” Iris latched onto the word, and stared at him, and he only gave her a flicker of a warning glare, not slowing his actions.

“Yes, another – Hold that down, and don’t let go till I tell you. Mikael, Martha, strap in! Jack, need you on helm!”

It was like a well-choreographed dance, as if they had been doing it together for hundreds of years. Iris didn’t argue with his commands, instead manoeuvring her slender hands across the console like it was her own, twisting the right knobs and pushing the right buttons. Mikael didn’t need to be told twice, and clung onto the upholstery of the captain’s chair, there being no real seatbelts to strap in with. Martha joined him, her skills as a medical professional useless when it came to piloting, and she knew she was better out of the way. And Jack took the third side, ready at the controls as the Doctor punched in temporal and spatial calculations.  
For the first time since she had been decommissioned and left for scrap, the TARDIS had a proper team at the helm, and the hum of the room purred appreciatively before the sound was drowned out by the groan of ancient engines. The central column began to rise and fall, and with a jolt, the ship was spinning through the vortex.

“Hang on tight,” The Doctor warned, as the scanner readout ticked ever closer to the pivotal point. His head had already begun to ache as the ship pushed forward into a barrier she shouldn’t have transgressed. The TARDIS began to shake and groan around them, the lights flickering with the effort, and for a brief moment, time seemed to still.

Then Iris’s voice broke the tension with a startled cry of pain, and his head exploded in a white-hot flare of agony, and he was vaguely aware of someone screaming in an agonized distress before the world went dark again.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

There were voices in the ether, floating about like effortless mists of sound. But they weren’t real, nothing the Doctor could actually hear. They were…

_whispers of forgotten fears, advice from friends, protestations, complaints, laughter, tears and…_

The Doctor liked these sort of dreams better than his usual sort, he decided. There were no explosions, for one thing. No vivid red-orange fire that existed only in his imagination and the screams of people whose names seemed to exist just outside the Doctor’s reach…

He was pleased with the change, and resented, in a vague, apathetic sort of way, the interruptions of his dreaming. A voice that sounded like a woman, neither English or Irish, but something between the two, murmuring something…

The voice of what he thought might have been a Roman answering, and being interrupted by another female with strong London tones and professional authority…

Someone with another Earth accent, quiet and commanding…

He knew those voices, he was sure, but thinking about where they belonged in his stack of memories tired him out. His mind was comfortably foggy, none of those random thoughts buzzing through his brain, scores of them at a time, all telling him different things. Just thinking about it made him feel more reluctant to drag himself from the warm spot his mind had made for itself.

He tried ordering his eyelids to open, but they seemed to be telling him that he really hadn’t thought about this at all, and hadn’t he better just leave them alone for a while? and stayed firmly closed.

**Ooo---oOo---ooO**

When the Doctor next drifted back to some semblance of consciousness, he found himself staring blearily up at the haphazard white ceiling and organic structures that made up the medical bay. He flinched slightly, expecting the light to bring new pain to his throbbing head. But, after a moment, he realised there was no pain. Not even a dull throb behind his eyes like before.

A figure swam into his line of sight, looking down at him as he blinked. Gradually the fuzz wore off and he found Martha staring down with a warm, easy smile. “Hello Doctor.”

“Math...Martha,” he said, but his speech was hampered by the familiar detachment that came with being drugged. He swallowed and cleared his throat. “Martha. Hello. How are you feeling?”

“Ah, no, that’s my question. You’re the patient this time around.” She chided, offering him a glass of water. He sipped gratefully and groaned, his head smacking back down onto the pillow with a comfortable thump.

“Fair enough,” he reasoned. “What happened?”

“What do you remember?”

He squinted up at the miss-mashed ceiling and sorted through the haze of his thoughts. “Venustas...I remember we left Venustas. I heard someone screaming.”

“Ye-eah, that was you,” Jack chuckled, joining Martha beside the bed and leaning on the counter. “We ran into your figurative bubble again on the return trip. The extra boost from that stabilizer’s power reserves got us to punch through nice as you please, but it didn’t stop you howling like a wounded animal and collapsing on the helmic regulator.”

“Oh no,” the Doctor groaned. A memory of Harry Sullivan’s clumsiness, leaning on the console and accidently sending the TARDIS centuries ahead of when they were supposed to be, floated to mind. “How far off the mark did I land us?”

“Not that far. A few days back – we landed maybe a day or two before our previous selves arrived. Oh, you should’ve seen it Doctor. We had to hole up indoors when the first ripple hit.”

“But it only lasted a few minutes,” Martha hurriedly added. “All the damage and stuff reset itself as soon as the other TARDIS dematerialized, and the Vortesaurs just vanished.”

“Even Iris’s bus is gone from the forest. The Eye of Orion is back to new,” Jack remarked brightly. The Doctor grunted appreciatively and smiled, closing his eyes.   
“Must’ve been a sight for Mikael...”

Then some semblance of concern fought past the drugged euphoria and latched onto Jack’s words. His eyes snapped back open in an instant and he struggled to sit up. “Iris! Where’s Iris?”

“Whoa, easy there Doc.” Jack pushed his shoulder gently, and the Time Lord was surprised that such a small amount of force had been enough to keep him from moving. He must’ve been worse off then he felt.

“What’s happened to Iris and Mikael?” he asked again, slower and more clearly. Martha and Jack exchanged a hesitant, uncertain glance, and Jack cleared his throat.

“Doctor, the reason you collapsed this time...” he began slowly. “Was, we’ve worked out, because of how you chose to revive Iris.”

“I don’t even pretend to understand what the technical stuff means,” Martha input, worrying the sleeve of her white lab coat as she avoided his gaze. “But from what Jack’s been piecing together, it seems like you didn’t just pull Iris’s timeline free of the War and bring her forward into yours. You literally wove hers and yours together like the threads of a blanket.”

“When we reached the barrier, Mikael was fine, as he’s not a time sensitive. But the strain that was pulling on Iris, keeping her tied back behind the bubble, it radiated to you. You were bearing the brunt of the attack. You’ve been out cold for about three days now. It would’ve been less, had Martha not decided that it was better to sedate you, to be sure you had fully recovered.”

The Doctor’s hearts skipped a beat with realisation, and the light in his brown eyes dimmed. “Iris...didn’t make it, did she?”

Martha and Jack exchanged another hesitant glance.

He shut his eyes painfully, getting the message plain and clear. _Iris_...

On one level, he found himself grieving simply because he was once again alone. He was the last, and would stay the last. The only Time Lord…and the only Gallifreyan.  
And on a more personal layer, he grieved for _her_. For Iris Wildthyme, a time-travelling adventuress with more gall than all his other selves put together. He had thought of her in many ways over their long friendship –thought of her as a sort of annoying younger sister, a pain, a worry, a nuisance, a tie to the world he had known, and a reminder that not all his people were staid pompous bureaucrats…

She really had just been a temporal anomaly in the end, unable to make the trip through to his world. He had been grasping at straws when he had pushed her into his TARDIS, told her to work the controls; allowing himself one last glimmer of hope that somehow, someway, he wouldn’t be alone anymore.

But he was.

“Rubbish,” a voice snapped with amusement from the door. “Who do you think it was that told them what to use to keep you drugged in happy-land these past few days?”

The Doctor’s eyes snapped open again, and he pushed himself completely up, though it made his head spin, staring with rising elation at Iris’s cheeky grin. She beamed at him as she walked over, looking run-ragged – her hair was an unkempt mess and her shirtsleeves were pushed up to her elbows. There was something akin to engine grease smeared over her cheek, and her floral skirt was rumpled. But looking at her, at that moment, the Doctor was positive he had never seen a more brilliant sight.

Then he noticed what was in her hand.

“Is that the directional control circuit to the vector tracker?” he demanded, his eyebrows elevating up his forehead. Iris snorted and crossed her arms, angling her head in a defiant manner.

“Rude, aren’t we. I’ve been doing some maintenance work while you napped. This old rust bucket of yours is in serious disrepair. Well? Aren’t you even going to say hello?”

For a moment, the Doctor was at a loss for words, his expression ranging between annoyance and disbelief as he preformed a fair imitation of a fish. It was the curl of Iris’s lips into a quirky smile that finally settled his emotions, and he grinned, letting out a breathless laugh. “Iris Wildthyme...you are the most stubbornly infuriating person I have EVER had the pleasure to know.”

“Likewise,” she said, and grinned back as he pulled her into the warmest bear hug he could possibly muster.


	13. The Last Time Lady

Though the day had progressed from sun-up with a droll, gloomy drizzle, the clouds had seen fit to part late in the afternoon. Now the sun’s rays drifted lazily across the sky, casting it’s reflection on the distant lakes and illuminating the system’s other planets. It made the Eye seem like the alien world it was. The horizon had begun to turn a rose-pink just over the mountains. It was, for lack of a better word, peaceful.

It felt wrong.

Iris tugged her coat closer against the evening breeze and touched the bottle of warm Kentucky bourbon to her lips, but she did not sip. She had drunk enough of the contents to create a pleasant buzz in the back of her mind, but it was also a warning – her new body wasn’t as alcohol-tolerant as her last. Yet another thing to get used to.

She sighed and finally took a pull at the lip of the bottle as the sound of the Doctor’s approach crunched on the gravelled pathway. The liquid burned down to her gullet, resting heavily, and she gave a satisfied smack of her lips, looking up at the man as he came to a stop beside her.

“Evening Doc. Welcome back to the land of the upright and conscious.” She smiled cheekily and offered him the bottle. With an endearingly cute puzzled look that knit his brow, he took it from her, and studied the label as he sat down beside her.

“Maker’s Mark? I don’t recall ever making a trip to Kentucky,” he remarked. Iris shrugged.

“Jack,” she said by way of explanation. “It’s good stuff.” She retrieved the bottle when it became apparent he wasn’t going to partake, and took another mouthful from the contents.

“You should go easy on that stuff,” he commented, stretching his legs out with an appreciative groan. Iris shrugged.

“It’s just to take the edge off,” she replied softly. “So much has happened in just a few days, it’s hard to wrap my head around it all. I keep debating whether I should be comparing it to the good old days, or crying my eyes out. And I don’t cry. Shows just how scrambled my brains got.”

She tapped the side of her head for show and let out a bleak laugh. “I remember, back on Gallifrey, no one really cared that I had hacked my way into the Matrix and erased all record of myself. Can’t even remember why I did it. It hurt, though, the silence. But I got used to it. I was free, no one to tie me down. And was it ever a rush, bouncing around the cosmos with friends –”

“Whom you kidnapped,” the Doctor input with a mild smirk.

“I didn’t kidnap all of them,” Iris objected with a lenient smile. “But now…” The smile faded. “Now everything is different. It feels different. It’s a different sort of silence. The clothes still fit, but the fabric feels wrong.”

The Doctor nodded in understanding. “It helps if you can keep a hold of something tangible, something familiar…” he said softly.

Iris nodded faintly, and raked her fingers through her curls. A short chuckle escaped her throat. “And then,” she giggled, “I reach out, and I touch your mind, way in that little corner of darkness, and all I want to do is cling to it like a life-raft in a storm.” She took another pull on the bottle and hung her head. “We’re both like that, I suppose; adrift at sea without anything to hold on to but each-other.”

Iris gave a small hiccup that turned into a sob, and she scrubbed her moist eyes with her fist furiously, taking another drink. The Doctor stole the bottle out of her hand with a frown, and set it on the ground. Iris drunk was one thing. Iris depressed and drunk was another.

“The TARDIS is about ready to go,” he said, shifting the subject and nudging her shoulder lightly. “I don’t know what you did while I was out, but it seems to have made her happy. Thank you.”  
Iris didn’t reply, and he shifted the subject again, glancing around curiously. “Where are the kids?”

The notion that their three companions were considered children brought the barest of smiles back to Iris’s face. She motioned towards the forest.

“Went exploring, I think; I get the impression that it’s rare for them to land on an alien planet where something doesn’t want to eat your face,” she said dryly.

The Doctor grinned. “More often then I like. But what’s adventure without a little danger, eh?”

“What indeed?” Iris agreed with a smile, before it faded. “Cept…what’s travel without a home? We’re renegades from a world that never existed. No place to run from. And I don’t even have a TARDIS anymore…”

She lingered for a moment, before reaching over and snatching back her bourbon. “Othering Other, I never used to be this morose. I think you and your guilt complex rubbed off on me.”

The Doctor watched her gulp down the last of the contents with a guilty silence.

“I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I am. It was either saving her, or saving you, and I just couldn’t let it happen. Not again.”

“S’alright Doc. I understand it, really I do. It’ll just…hurt for a while.” Iris screwed the cap back onto the empty bottle and set it down beside her feet. “I’m just glad we did one last good deed before her end…one last adventure to save space and time.”

“And for once, there wasn’t one of your homicidal handbags involved.”

She cracked a grin at that, and giggled. “Yeah.”

He grinned. “It seemed like every time I ran into you, some evil cult was after your handbag.”

A laugh. “Remember the sentient one and the whole mess with Verdigris?”

He shuddered comically and smirked. “How could I forget? It took me forever to clean up that house.”

She cackled wildly, and leaned against him. “And the whole Federation Council was hidden under a hill in Wales!”

He joined her, and they were still laughing gleefully as Martha, Jack, and Mikael returned from their hike. Jack’s trousers were soaked up to the crotch, and Mikael’s borrowed tunic was splattered with mud. Martha was stifling giggles.

“What’s so funny?” Jack asked with an old teasing light in his eyes as he grinned impishly at the laughing Time Lords. The Doctor managed to sober up, but he was still grinning as he eyed the three up and down. Iris had less success, spluttering into another fit of giggles.

“Just reminiscing; what happened to you?”

“Got shoved in the lake. I could’ve walked back naked, but Martha threatened me with a stick if I corrupted Mikael’s poor innocent mind.” Jack pouted at her playfully and she shoved him with a grin.

“Sounds like a fun time.”

Jack grinned. “More fun to be had, Doctor. The TARDIS all ready to go?”

“Just about,” the Doctor smiled, and turned to Iris, offering her a hand up. She pulled herself to her feet and wavered for a second before steadying. The Doctor grinned at her, taking her hands between his. “Well Iris?”

“Well what?” she blinked at him. “If you’re about to propose…I’m hardly at my best, Doctor, it really wouldn’t be the most romantic thing in the world.”

His smile fell into annoyance. “No, Iris. I was going to ask, would you stick with us? Hang about the ol’ girl, travel together. You’d go nuts staying in one place, one time, y’know. It’d be like exile.”

For a moment, a flicker of bright hope appeared in her blue eyes, lightening them to the colour of the sky. Then it faded, and she gave him a sad, wry smile. “It’d never work out, Doc. We’re at each-other’s throats ninety-five percent of the day. Even I see that. Travelling together, we’d kill one-another in under a week.”

He smiled, sadly. “Yeah…I know; didn’t hurt to ask.” He dropped her hands, hugged her shoulders gently with one arm. “Course, I knew that from day one…which is why I took a detour from the detention centre on my way to the hospital, pre-programmed your bus to follow my TARDIS on the return trip, and used the Katseye – that was the other Key segment I mentioned – to power the crossing between _that_ side, and _this_ one.”  
He snubbed her nose with his finger and smiled his most brilliant, _poncy-Lord-of-Time_ smile.

She stared at him as if he had grown two heads. “Say what?”

As if summoned by some magical cue, the air was filled with the familiar rushing grind of a TT-capsule materialization sequence, and out of the thin of the air, Iris’ bus condensed into view, parked neatly alongside, and a few yards away from, the squat blue form of the Doctor’s ship.

Iris was speechless.

“Am I forgiven?” The Doctor asked in a low voice.  
She punched him in the arm, hard.

“YOU GIT! You made me sit there lamenting my heart out for an hour and you had this planned all along!” Iris punched his arm again and he grinned, bouncing out of her reach and rubbing the tender area. Meanwhile, Iris had forgotten all about him in the span of two seconds, and dashed over to the vehicle, crooning happily and giving the front hood a hug. “Aunty Iris missed you ol’ girl. Welcome home.”

“You’re welcome,” the Doctor called, and smiled over at Mikael, who grinned back. Martha shook her head and strolled over to where the Time Lady was fussing over her ship.

“She looks a lot better then when we found her the first time,” the medical student commented, giving the paintwork a warm caress and smiling brightly when it thrummed under her fingers.

“You better believe it. My ol’ bus can withstand anything!” Iris beamed, and pushed open the doors, wincing reflexively. The main cabin was a mess, the result of the bumpy ride through the vortex, and the lights were on emergency power. She could only imagine what the trip had done to the rest of the interior dimensions.  
Her enthusiasm quickly evaporated into concern as she stroked the console soothingly, coaxing life back into the computers to get a diagnostic. The Doctor stepped up into the cabin and unplugged the power circuit he had constructed, pocketing it and the Katseye diamond in his duster.

“Not too much damage, I hope?” he asked, leaning on the back of the seat and peering over her shoulder.

“It all seems fine, nothing I can’t fix, but I’m running a bit low on power,” Iris said worriedly. “I don’t think she has it in her for another trip.”

“The Eye of Harmony isn’t accessible anymore,” the Doctor said. “But I’ve got that worked out as well. C’mon.” He tugged her arm and she followed him out of the bus. “Jack!”

“I’m on it!” The Time Agent turned heel and disappeared into the TARDIS. A moment later, both ships had dematerialized, and only the Police Box reappeared, standing where the bus had been a moment later. The Doctor smiled.

“Jack’s learning quickly. A quick spatial hop, and your ship now rests quite comfortably inside mine. We’ll be able to take her anywhere in time and space, and I know the perfect place for her to rest up and refuel.”

“Where?”

 “Cardiff, here we come!” Jack cried triumphantly as he burst out of the TARDIS, and paused. “I never thought I’d say THAT.”

“CARDIFF?” Iris repeated with disbelief.

“What’s in this…Cardiff place?” Mikael asked curiously.

“A rift-scar. It’s been opened and resealed a few times, and it makes for a good fuelling station for wayward TARDISes. And, convenience; the Torchwood-3 hub is hidden right beneath it.” Jack smirked thoughtfully. “At least, as long as the team hasn’t sucked all of Wales into a pocket dimension. Ah, makes me homesick just thinking about it. Or is that sick of home?” He chuckled and put an arm around the young man’s shoulders. “You’ll love it, Mikael, I promise.”

The young scientist blushed. “ _Gratias ago vos nam._ A couple of weeks ago I would’ve scoffed at the idea of other worlds beyond Orion. Now I’m faced with an overabundance of aliens. Not that’s a bad thing,” he amended, smiling at Iris. “But what will happen to me, in the end? I doubt I’d fit in very well in your time, Jack. Or yours, Martha, though Mars sounds beautiful.” He shrugged Jack’s arm off his shoulder and folded his arms across his chest in a defensive posture. “I suppose I feel a bit lost.”

“We could always take you home,” the Doctor suggested. “Not Venustas; Rome, on Earth. History shows that the last of your people made it there, decades before the city was built, and helped found the Roman Empire.”

“Wait a minute, how did you know that?” Martha asked suspiciously. “We never got to tell you. You dashed out before we could say anything about the evacuation.”

“Because he put the books out for us to find,” Jack said with a mixed note of annoyance and impressed humour, having worked it out long ago. “Or rather, the TARDIS did.”

The Doctor nodded. “I counted on Martha’s stubbornness to help, and Jack’s loyalty to the web of time, being a former Time Agent, to sense the right course of action and act accordingly. I took a risk, trusted your instincts, and you didn’t let history down, which is why I didn’t fly off the handle back in Advica. However, you cut it rather close for comfort, getting back to the TARDIS.”

Iris rolled her eyes. “You’re getting more and more like that Scottish you every day, Doctor,” she muttered darkly.

The Doctor tried to look indignant. “It’s just foresight and planning!” he protested.

“We…cut it a bit close for comfort?!” Martha looked like she was going to hit something –or someone. The Doctor made sure Jack was between him and the irate Martian.  
“You manipulative –”

“Miss Jones, please,” Jack admonished. “There are ladies present.”

Martha looked annoyed for a moment longer, and then caught herself laughing. “I’m just glad you’re both alright,” she admitted.

Mikael shook his head. “It was clever of you, Doctor. But I don’t think Rome is the place for me either. By all rights I should be dead; I don’t need experience to read that that might be a problem in the long run.”

“Normally, you’d be right. But in this instance, the small ripple of your survival was swallowed by the larger wave that the explosion created. You’re safe as houses; no inter-dimensional birds of prey shrieking for blood over our heads.”

“And if you wouldn’t mind so terribly to travel around with an old bat like myself, I’d love the company,” Iris said hopefully. Mikael blushed and smiled widely.  
“ _Sono somnium._ If I was going to be spooked off, I never would’ve climbed onto that first shuttle to Niveus Astrum with you at the wheel.”

Iris laughed and hugged him brightly. The Doctor grinned, and clapped his hands together, rubbing them excitedly. “Alright kids, all aboard! Next stop, the Millennium Centre!”

As his two companions ushered the young scientist into the police box, the Doctor stole a glance at Iris, and found that she hadn’t moved. Her gaze had turned to the horizon, and the light of the sunset framed her hair in a fire-glow with the oranges of the sky. Her eyes seemed wistful, lost in thought. The Doctor slid his hands into his pockets as he approached her, gazing out at the view.

“What’s on your mind, Wildthyme?” He quipped with a smile. She smirked with a soft chuckle, and shook her head.

“Just enjoying the last of the view, Doc. Floating in the silly thoughts of an old Time Lady,” she said, tucking her hands into the pockets of her tattered old coat. “It’s a brand new world, Doctor.”

“New-new Iris,” he joked. “But all kidding aside, you will be careful, won’t you? There’s no CIA to heal our little mistakes anymore. You’ll have to tread carefully, stop drawing attention. Avoid picking up handbags that happen to be relics of cult-worshipping zombies.”

She nodded with a chuckle. “I’ll try my best, if you do. We’ve got to stick together, us two. Last of our kind.”  
Her gaze sharpened with a glitter of mischievousness and she sighed, leaning her head against his arm. “And it’s only really started to sink in properly, I think. You and I, we really are the last of our kind. The only two Time Lords – the only Gallifreyans, even, left in the whole universe…”

The Doctor’s smile faded as her tone took on a dreamy quality, and he stiffened. “No.”

Her smile fell and she looked at him with a wounded pout. “But you don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Yes I do. And you can forget about it. No, no, no-no-no-no, a million times no.” He started walking towards the TARDIS, unlocking the door.

Iris scampered after him, a devilish grin on her features as she followed him in. “But it’s our duty to the whole of creation to repopulate our species!”

“Duty? What duty? I am duty-free, Iris. I owe the universe no such favours.”

“What’s this about repopulating a species? If you’re looking for volunteers I’d be happy to–”

“Jack! Don’t encourage her!”

The sound of laughter was drowned out by the rhythmic, wheezing groan of the engines as the light atop the Police Box began to flash, and the TARDIS slowly faded away into the Vortex.


End file.
